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Today my 12 year old brother in-law and I lunched our new water rockets and we have some exciting photos that capture the moment. Not to be out done on the camera I have some great photos of our water rockets as they take to the air and after some careful consideration we have the right way and the wrong way to launch a water rocket. Shooting our purple and yellow water missiles skyward we learned that a good launch area should be clear from trees and buildings. We learned some of the laws of physics such as what comes up must come down and we had a lesson in Murphy's law.
Water rockets love to follow Murphy's law, meaning that what can go wrong will go wrong, or in our case the rockets will land on the roof. This brings up a good point and that is that you should anticipate where your H2O rockets might land and if you have to launch where there are obstacles, try and minimize the chance of your water missiles landing in trees or on the roof of your house or even worse the dreaded neighbors yard.
If your H2O rocket can fly up to a 100 feet then you should make sure there is nothing that can pose as a hazard to your flight for a hundred and fifty feet all around the spot that you are blasting off. If you have trouble approximating the distance you can take a string and measure out the appropriate distance, then attach one end to a stick and plant it into the ground at the launch point. Once you have fastened the stick to the water rocket launcher area you can walk out in a circle and determine the safety zone.
The ideal place to launch your set of water rockets would be a big open field with low cut grass. The low cut grass is very important because otherwise you can lose the H2O Rockets as they will be hard to see in tall grass. We even though about a sandy beach because then you could use salt water as propellant for your water rockets and you would not have to worry about the salt water contaminating the soil. I my opinion salt water is a little denser than fresh water because of the dissolved salt. This may make for some interesting experiments on which type of water gives water rockets the best lift.
I am very temped to modify these H2O rockets to increase the amount of compressed air and water mass that these water rockets can hold. My first thought would be to cut the water rockets in half and then splice in a tube to lengthen the fuselage. The tube would have to be sealed with a strong clue or epoxy. Now I am already thinking about making a carbon fiber water rocket, so stay tuned and look for my modification page to see what I am up to.
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