"
Lovely work darlings, simply lovely," Professor Burbage praised as she walked around the room and looked at everyone's work. There were bottle rockets in house colors, ones that sparkled, ones that were hoping to help find a missing bat (poor dear), and then there was her junior studmuffin that had put her face on it. SIIIIIIIIIIIMPLY charming.
She looked at her watch and then at the progress of all her students and decided that it was about time to move things along.
Clapping her hands loudly to get everyone's attention, Marion made he way back to the front of the room holding her marigold colored bottle rocket under her arm. "
DARLINGS! If you could please clean up your spaces now and set your rockets to the side for the time being, please. There is one more important matter we need to discuss before we move outside."
Suuuuuuuuuuurely they did not think that they were going to launch these inside, right? Silly little children. Ho ho ho ho!
"
Now, if you could all please look at the board or refer to your notes on Newton's laws of motion," she said as she tapped her wand against the board.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the board
Newton's laws of motion Law 1. The Law of Inertia:
“An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.”
Law 2. The Law of Proportionality:
“The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to its mass.” This can be expressed in equation form:
Force = (Mass) x (Acceleration) Law 3. The Law of Action-Reaction:
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Source: Space Flight Systems Mission Directorate "
Without understanding these laws, mankind would have neeeeeeever been able to launch aaaaaaanything into space. Not satellites. Not monkies. Not humans. And ceeeeeertainly not rockets, which is why we are studying them. It is because of our understanding of these that all that was made possible and the field of astronomy was able to rise to new heights." She picked up her bottle rocket and held it up for the class to see. "
Your rockets will be using water as its 'fuel' source. Meaning that water shall be the propellant that comes out of the nozzle here and shooooooots it up into the air when we pump air into it. In order to accomplish this, you will need to produce enough thrust. This muuuuuuuuust be greater than the weight of your rocket. For example, say this rocket here weighs 10 pounds," which it didn't, but that was not the point. "
An upwards thrust of 10 pounds would keep your rocket stationary and at a constant level. 12 pounds of it wouldn't launch your rocket very high, but the trust would be greated than the weight of this rocket so it wooooooould move."
She paused for a moment tapped her bottle with her wand, filling it about 1/3 of the way with water. "
Some of you may wonder why we cannot just use air to launch our rockets. The answer is rather simple darlings. Water is almost 800 times more dense than air. So, when your bottle rockets expel water, they will be expelling total mass and this increased mass results in increased rocket performance!" She paused for a moment so that students could write down any notes they wish. "
Noooooow, some of you may be thinking, BUT PROFESSOR!? WHY DIDN'T YOU FILL YOUR ROCKET ALL THE WAY WITH WATER?! Tooooooo much water will cause your bottle rocket to be toooooo heavy and therefore hinder its flight. Too much of a good thing can be bad darlings."
But she was somewhat getting ahead of herself here. Oops. "
Please keep all this in mind as you think over the following statements please, darlings." And she gave her wand a flick towards the board again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the black board
Rockets create thrust by expelling a propellant (water in our case)
The greater the thrust the faster your rocket will go
She then turned to face the class, her smile as wiiiiiiiiiiiiide as can be. "
Please select ONE of these statements and think about which of Newton's laws of motion best fits the statement. You may discuss among your classmates or siiiiiiiiiiiimply think on your own. You may share your thoughts whenever you are ready. We will just discuss this for a feeeeeeeeeew minutes and then head outside."
Alright. Off you go now all you future rocket scientists!
OOC: we will be moving on to the final part of the lesson approximately 24 hours from this post. Please pick just ONE of the statements above 