Space and Rockets page: 2011

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Other classes get involved

Look at what Ms. Flaherty's class did with rockets during Science Week 2011 http://scoilchaitrionajnrmsflaherty.blogspot.com/2011/11/science-week.html
Fizzy Rockets in Ms. Tierney's class http://scoilchaitrionajnrmstierney.blogspot.com/2011/11/fizzy-rockets.html

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Monday, November 14, 2011

Ready for our display day tomorrow

Today we had the opportunity to launch another kind of air rocket. It is a Top Gear rocket.

It came from the home of one of the boys in our class.

This rocket was amazing. It flew so far straight up into the air. It took over 10 seconds to land back on the ground. It was amazing! Thank you so much for lending us your rocket for the morning. We had lots of fun with it.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Volcanoes on Venus

We know that there are a lot of volcanoes on Venus. We know that there are some volcanoes on the Earth too. We know that they smell foul, that they can give off poisonous gasses and that they spit out very hot, red lava.

Today we made our own volcano in class.

Here are the things you need to make a volcano. You should get a tray to sit the volcano on, a small bottle and some vinegar and bread soda. If you would like the deluxe model, you also need some red food colouring to make the lava look red, and some wash-up liquid to make bubbles.

It was very exciting watching our volcano erupting.

There seemed to be a lot of gas made in this volcano. Was it enough to blow up a balloon? Take a look at this video to find out:

Now that we had a balloon filled with carbon dioxide gas, we wondered whether this gas was lighter or heavier than air. The people who thought it would be lighter than air, thought that the balloon would float when she let go (so they stood up), but those that thought it would be heavier than air and that it would just sink, they sat down on the ground. Look at the result! Who was right?

Next teacher blew up another balloon. We know that we breathe in Oxygen and breathe out Carbon Dioxide gas. That means that the balloon teacher inflated was now filled with Carbon Dioxide. We decided to drop both at the same time and see did they react in the same way? Some of us thought that maybe one would float and one would sink. To keep the test fair, both balloons had to be released at the same time. Look at what happened:

Craters on the moon

Our own rockets

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Rockets on display in and outside Room 5

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Balloon rockets and fizzy rockets

We wanted to launch a balloon rocket. First of all we tried to get our balloon to fly straight to teacher.
This was impossible, though we tried our best.

Some of us thought of other good ideas: putting a straw inside the balloon, tying the balloon to string, and tying string around the balloon.

These were good ideas, but they didn't help us fly the balloon in a straight line. Finally, with teacher's help, we taped the balloon to a straw with thread going through it. This worked really well. We had to figure out in which direction the balloon would fly, and whether we could get the balloon to fly uphill.

We did it!!! Another rocket success story!!

Helicopters and a dragster

We have some helicopter blades. By attaching a balloon we can get our helicopter to fly. This took a little practice though. We even tried holding the helicopter upside down. Ms. Lally was our champion helicopter launcher!

We all took turns at powering a helicopter that got its energy from our hands rubbing together. Some of the class were very good at this!

We have a car that is powered by balloons. We had to figure out which way to point the balloon so that the car would move forward. We guessed correctly. This is what happens when the balloon faces one way, then the other!