Experiment Data Analysis Lab

PHYS 391 - Winter 2012
Lab 2 - Rockets—Simulations, Thrust, Drag and Real-world Trials

Updated

Lab Goals

In this lab we will use water rockets made out of 2L soda bottles to continue our exploration of some concepts in mechanics, such as thrust, impulse, force, momentum transfer, momentum conservation, etc. We will launch rockets with particular sets of water volume, pressure, etc., to see if they match the predictions from your Matlab simulation from Lab 1. This process may lead to your identifying ‘bugs’ in your code (eg., improper conversion of volume from fractions of a liter into appropriate units), or you may be able to refine your estimate (an ‘educated guess’ at best) of the drag term, however you stated it in your code. Another, major challenge for this lab is to determine the appropriate data for the real water rocket launches, how will you determine the maximum height of a particular rocket launch, and how will you time this? These are things to consider before we go out to launch rockets (as a lab section group). What sorts of materials will be useful to estimate maximum height and flight time? How will you estimate the error associated with those values?

Lab Manifest

General Instructions

The lab handout, linked above, gives detailed instructions for this lab.

Code Assignment

In addition to the instructions posed in the lab handout, please email me your final water rocket simulation function with corrections for drag, etc. that came out of this lab.

Errata

You should work in groups of two for this lab, for purposes of discussion of launch measurement techniques, to work as a team on one (or two) rocket launches, to get feedback on your own Matlab simulation, etc. We will be launching rockets as a lab section group at a location TBA, weather permitting. We may need to do this launch during week two of labs (weather forcast for 1-18, 1-19 is attrocious). If that is the case, we'll work on matlab simulations and plan for launch measurements the week of the 18th.