Five, four, three, two, one BLAST OFF! The seventh graders at Tripp Middle School are wrapping up the unit of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. To complete the unit, the three teams at our school are getting the seventh graders together and having a rocket launching competition. Test launches have began and now the students are working to improve the rockets. What went wrong during the launch and what can you do to fix this?

As classes, the seventh graders on each team will be competing against classmates. The winners of the class launches will be competing against other students on the other two teams. The rocket that goes the farthest out of the the top team rocket launchers will be receiving gift certificates.

Classes have been researching and checking out how bottle rockets work. Resources are the Internet, our science books, and books from the library. The science teachers here have made up a list of things to be researched. The students have to figure out how they want their bottle rocket to work and look. Do you want a cone-shaped nose cone, or a rounded nose cone? If you think aerodynamics, the cone shaped nose cone would probably work best. What about the body? Long, medium, or short?

Students are preparing for lift off and the rockets are under construction. If you see a bottle rocket flying by around this time don’t be surprised if its coming from this way.