Peggy R., Sand Springs:

I have a group of students who will build a small balsa wood tower, and apply weights to it to test the effects of g forces on the tower.

Another group will send up yeast and test the growth of the yeast to see if it is different than the control yeast that remains on the ground.

Results:
The boys built 4 identical towers and broke 3 before the launch to determine the breaking point of the tower.  Their tower was broken after the flight, but based on the damage, it appeared that it broke as a result of the landing. 

Our second project involved samples of activated yeast.  They determined that there was no effect on the rising of the yeast from the launch.  They also sent samples of pond water up, and found there was a significant difference between the number of active microscopic organisms versus the control. They hypothesized the difference in the pressure, and possibly the trauma of the landing caused the demise of the microscopic critters.

Adrienne F., Union:

Team one will be the winner of an "egg drop" contest that will be held a week or so before the launch.  Students will be challenged to design an egg protector that will keep the egg intact after being dropped from the stairwell in the school and then thrown against a wall by a baseball coach.

Team two will test a class experiment, using two different materials to protect a hard boiled egg (peanut butter and a non-newtonian fluid: cornstarch and water).  If there is room we will also put an egg in a plastic bag with no substance to be the control.

Results:
The winning "egg drop" students developed egg protectors. One was in a student made container and protected using Rice Crispies and the other was protected in peanut butter. Both eggs survived. Next year I will try to develop a way to test a control. 

Conclusion: The forces the egg experienced during the rocket launch were less than the force exerted when thrown against a wall by a baseball coach (none of those eggs survived).

Jodi C., Union:

One canister will be an egg protector along the same lines as Adrienne is doing.

Another canister will include a clock to determine if the accelleration forces affect the time recorded.  If there is room, we will include some tubes of shaving cream, cornstarch and water, jello, and some liquids stacked by density (alcohol, water, corn syrup, baby oil, and cooking oil).

Results:
Our egg survived (packed in Jello and Foam) - not a crack and when we cracked it open, everything looked normal. Our fluids that were stacked by density (alcohol, water, corn syrup, baby oil, cooking oil) mixed together and we are leaving them out to see if they will separate back to the original order. We have some separation so far. We sent up a timer as well and when it came back, it matched our control timer exactly, so no change in time, at least with the stop watches we used.

Doug B., Tulsa Tech:

Experiment Background:
A need exists in the world of hobby rocketry for separating boosters and payload sections on mid-power and high-power hobby rockets; either at apogee or at a predetermined altitude after apogee. Most rocket enthusiasts use some form of pyrotechnic to separate sections of a rocket, usually initiated by an electronic signal from an on-board altimeter. However, the use of black powder requires the user to be 18 years of age or older. Due to the fact that many of our students 
are under 18, this is problematic for the use of mid-power hobby rocketry in an educational setting. Our class set out to design and develop a mechanical mechanism to separate sections of a mid-power rocket through mechanical and electrical means only.

One question that needed to be addressed is whether the present design would be stable in the pre-deployed state. That is, prior to employing the mechanism, we needed to know if the vibrations caused during the thrust phase and burnout phase would cause the mechanism to deploy prior to receiving the appropriate electronic signal from the altimeter or flight computer. 

Experiment Description 
In order to perform a quick check on the stability of our apparatus, we positioned the apparatus in its cocked position and placed it in the payload on the Rocket Science mission, conducted by the Tulsa Rocketry Club, at 1500hrs on May 4, 2008. The current mechanism did not have any safety latches to hold the trigger in its cocked position.

We knew coming in to this experiment that a number of unknown factors could cause our experiment to fail. In particular, if the apparatus did deploy, we had no way of knowing when the deployment took place. At the time, we did not have the mechanisms in place to record this data. However, we understood that if the deployment did not occur during flight, we would have had reason to believe that the apparatus was indeed highly stable. Therefore, some limited knowledge would be gained from this experiment. 

Outcome 
Upon mission completion (May 4, 2008), inspection of the payload verified that the apparatus did indeed deploy due to the forces internal to the rocket during the mission. As discussed above, we have no way of knowing which forces caused the deployment. But, this limited data is leading us to believe that an additional mechanism is needed to exert positive control on the trigger to prevent deployment until the appropriate signal is transmitted.

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Page last modified Tuesday, May 13, 2008