What is the best fuel for a bottle rocket?

By Nicolas Gerlein

Rocket Fuels

• Dry Ice. • Water Pressure • Mentos with Soda • Baking Soda

Why?

• Well, sometimes I am really bored, so after this I can just say “Hey! I’ll go make a bottle rocket”. Also, I like chemical reactions.

Newtons Third Law

• For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Materials• 6 1 liter plastic bottle • I bag of Dry Ice • 2 pack Mint Mentos • 6, 2 liter bottles of Diet Coke • 1 small box of Baking Soda • 2 cans of Vinegar • Water • Bicycle Wheel Inflator • Camera • Stopwatch • Corks • A metal tube (launcher) • Scissors

Hypothesis

• I think that the dry ice rocket will have the most hang time due to the fact that the dry ice becomes a gas very quickly which builds the pressure inside the bottle.

General Procedure

• We began by building the bottle rockets. It was just a bottle with a cork. We tested each one in our front lot with 2 tests of each rocket. We timed the amount of time in the air, which is how we determined which is the best rocket. We would insert the different materials needed for each bottle rocket, cork it put it in the launcher and run.

Dry Ice Rocket

• The reason it goes up is because of sublimation.

• Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid phase to the gas phase without passing through the intermediate liquid phase.

• The pressure that is formed inside the rocket fuels it to go up.

The dry ice

Soda and Mentos Rocket

• The foam is created because of the tiny holes in the surface area of the Mentos.

• These holes allow the carbon dioxide to form into tiny bubbles which creates pressure.

• The pressure, in theory, lifts the bottle into the air.

Soda and Mentos Reaction

Water Pressure Rocket

• It works when you add the air to the half water filled rocket using the pump to pump air through a hole in a cork, it creates a bubble that pressurizes the air volume in the top of the bottle. The compressed air shoots the cork off which in turn lifts the bottle up into the air.

Baking Soda and Vinegar Rocket• What actually happens is this: the acetic acid, which is

what makes vinegar sour reacts with sodium bicarbonate, the compound that's in baking soda to form Carbonic Acid. It's really a Double Replacement Reaction. The Carbonic Acid is unstable, and it immediately falls apart into carbon dioxide and water. It is a Decomposition Reaction. The bubbles that come from the reaction come from the carbon dioxide escaping the solution that is left. That fuels the rocket.

• It goes up in the air by using the pressure to blow off the cork.

Baking Soda Rocket

substances time 1 Time 2 Average1/2 bottle water and compressed air 2.8 1.57 2.1851/4 bottle water and compressed air 2.87 2.88 2.875Vinegar and Baking Soda 1.39 2.89 2.14Mentos and Diet Coke 0 0 0Dry Ice and Water 2.5 3.29 2.895

Observation

Conclusion

• Due to the information that we got in the tests, the dry ice was the best rocket fuel with the most time in the air

Safety

You should never handle dry ice alone. It can deal out very painful burns (which is an oxymoron if you ask me) if you are not careful. Please have a parent supervising. Do not try this at home!!!!!!Water Pressure though and the other ones are perfectly safe, but please have parent supervision.