Special Thanks

Two things, first, We have to thank Timur Balbekov for helping with the programming aspect of this project because the accelerometer stuff was too crazy for us to do alone. Tim's the man.

Second, we also have to thank Schmartboard and Freecale for donating some supplies for the accelerometer. Along with that is this entry from Timur's website (www.orbitality.com, go check it out) had typed up about his experience using these supplies.

"Sourcing Accelerometers: Most accelerometers are designed for use in laptops and cell phones. Because of this, they are designed to be small. Their size makes it extremely difficult to solder for the average hobbyist without a reflow oven (think toaster oven for microchips) or a really hot blow dryer. A company that has sponsored our efforts, Schmartboard, has developed a product that makes soldering easy.

A schmartboard contains solder and small gutters into which the tiny pins of these accelerometers drop into. From there it is a small matter of heating the junction with a regular soldering iron. The board contains drilled holes through which headers can be placed to plug the sensors into a through-hole board. From start to finish, attaching a chip to one of these boards should take no longer than five minutes. The downside of this convenience is size: compared to a standard breakout board (board without the pre-placed solder), the Schmartboard is much larger. Since we are working with size constraints (the device has fit into a rocket), it will be necessary to take a dremel to the boards to cut them down to size.

The accelerometers were sampled from Freescale, who sent us two 50g (upper accleration limit) single-axis accelerometers (MMA2202EG) and a two three-axis 10g accelerometers. Small rockets can reach upwards of 100g, so these sensors are by no means excessive. The 50g accelerometer is in a SOIC (surface outline IC) package, which means its a small DIP chip that has “gull wing” leads that don’t poke through the PC board. The smaller accelerometer is QFN (quad flat no lead) and has no protruding pins. It’s also very small, and it turns out that the chip has non standard lead pitch. Normally, QFN16 (16 leads) chips have a distance (pitch) of .65mm between pins. The chip we received has a pitch of 1mm, making it impossible to use the Schmartboard for that chip. It is possible to solder wires directly to a QFN chip provided the wires are thin enough (magnet wires). A good idea would be to glue the QFN chip to the adapter board but make the connections with magnet wire."

Oh, and here is the Schmartboard logo:

And their site: www.schmartboard.com

And here is the Freescale logo:

Along with their site:www.freescale.com

-Rebel Rockets

Rebel Rockets-Day 22

I guess this is the last journal post. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be what we did or if we are supposed to reflect on the overall experience, so I'll just do both. To start off we made this awesome video montage of our rocket launches and then made a slide show, and then put together a presentation board for the SEE Fair...that took up our whole day. As for the whole project, I had a really good time, and it was way better than going to school. During the project we had to constantly adapt to our different needs because we always had problems. This is something that we probably wouldn't have had to do if we were in school, and that single learning experience is something that makes the senior project worth it. I had a great time, almost want to keep doing it...Almost.

-Mike B.

Today, we completely finished the project. We made the video montage, which took a good deal of time because we had to get all the videos uploaded onto the computer. Also, we lost one of the cameras, and that took a while to find. We also printed out all the graphs and placed them on the poster. We also printed out the program that Tim wrote for us for the accelerometer and placed that on the poster. A powerpoint was also finished for the SEE fair.
This entire experience was really fun. It was a lot better than going to school for the last month. I couldn't imagine how bad senioritis would have been if we were in school instead of doing the Senior Enrichment Experience. I didn't expect to run into all the problems that we did during this experience. There were so many obstacles in this project like waiting for the accelerometer to arrive, figuring out a way to construct homemade model rockets, and all the failed launches. We really had to work together and come up with new ways around all the problems so that our ultimate goals could still be accomplished. Overall, it was a really good experience, however, since it was the first time for our school to be doing this, there will probably be changes made.

-Christian

Today was spent making the video montage for the SEE fair. That took up most of the day. We worked on uploading all of the pictures and put music to the music. We also built a poster to present our project with.
Over the course of this project, i learned many new things. I also learned how to solve problems in a new way. If i had not done this project, i wouldn't have been forced to solve these problems. I believe that i have grown because of this project and I would definately recommend this to continue on over the next years.

-Ben W.

Today was the final day of our SEE project. We did all that was left to do. We worked on making a video montage for our presentation. We then made a poster to present our project. We printed out all of the accelerometer graphs and put them on the poster. We then printed the programming for our poster, crediting Tim. Last we put the A3-4T thrust graph and the displacement prediction graph on the poster. With this we had finished our project. Our project was a learning experience for everyone in the group. We all learned to solve problems in our own way and through teamwork. The roadblocks that we encountered only helped us push ourselves to accomplishing our goals, whether they were during construction or in the math. I personally was able to push myself farther than I have before when doing the calculus. It was good to get back into math, as I did not have a math course to take this year. It was a good experience to prepare for my major in college. I would recommend the SEE project to any senior who would have the opportunity to participate in it.

-Scott

Rebel Rockets- Day 21

We finished the math today completely, along with all the graphs. Not only this we launched the final rocket successfully, so we're all done with that stuff. Now all we have to do is finish the presentation stuff for the SEE Fair and everything is done with. Not much else to say besides that. And the video of this last launch was accidentally uploaded to another day, so it's a couple posts below.

-Mike B.

Today, all the calculus predictions were completed and also, since we launched the last rocket, the data was collected from the accelerometer for the final graph. We got all the data ready on the computer and started to compile all the videos and pictures from all the cameras we used to document this entire experience. All that is left is to actually make the presentation for the SEE fair. The poster needs to be done, and so do the powerpoints and the video.

-Christian

Today we launched the last rocket and collected the data from the accelerometer. We then started to collect all of the accelerometer graphs and the launch videos for presentation. We also double-checked all of the calculus and then made all of it ready for presentation. All that remains is the presentation itself: the poster and the powerpoint show.

-Scott

Rebel Rockets-Day 20

We built our final rocket today. Not only this but we finished up the math/graphs and started preparation for our presentation for the SEE Fair. On the downside though, the launch didn't work, we think it's because the fuses are kind of faulty, and we needed another electrical ignition system but we didn't have one. So we have to wait until tomorrow to launch off the final one.

-Mike B.

Today, we built our last rocket. We did most of the graphs and math for the project. We also started to prepare for the SEE fair, deciding what to make for it. We decided to do a slideshow of our pictures, and a video montage of all our launches. We then tried to launch, but the conditions for launching were not optimal. Also, the fuses were not working for some reason and we couldn't find any igniters. The final launch will be done tomorrow.

-Christian

Today was spent building our final rocket. We also began our work on the SEE fair presentation. We decided on making a powerpoint to show everyone what we had done. We would also show our launches. Tomorrow, we will finish the final launch of the project. After this, we will be able to combine our data to find which rocket went the highest.

-Ben W.

Today we finished integrating the equations for the predictions. We got a maximum height of around 22 meters, which is very close to what we had in actuality. We then graphed the piecewise function of displacement that was integrated from the velocity. The graph was close to what we generally received from the accelerometer. That concluded one part of our project. We then moved on to creating the final rocket with the shorter fuselage. We will do our final launch tomorrow and conclude another part of the project.

-Scott

Rebel Rockets-Day 19

Today, we set off many of our variables. We were able to find a system of launching then quickly changing the engine to launch again. We were able to do the launches for the cone, wings, and the taller fuselage. With this data already done, we will easily be able to finish our variables by tomorrow. We will launch the shorter fuselage tomorrow. Once this is done, we will compare the different data and compare.

-Ben W.
We set off most of the rockets to collect data today. The accelerometer hopefully worked in all of them. We found a way to change the engine quickly enough so that we could do multiple trials. We had 2 trials per variable. Since we used hot glue to glue in the engine, once we recovered the rocket, we were able to pull out the used engine and place in the new one while the glue was still melted. Tomorrow all we need to do is test the shorter fuselages. Then we also have to upload all the data onto the computer. We are almost done with the project,but we still have to set up our presentation for the SEE fair on the 17th.

-Christian

We did many launches today to collect all the data for our different variables. We went to the field and used the same fuselage to test the type of fin and the cone size. For each variable, we had two trials. It did no take too long to test all these variables with one fuselage because we had a system that allowed us to quickly remove and insert the engines. It went pretty systematically because we used this method. We also made the second fuselage that we are going to test tomorrow and collect the data from the accelerometer.

-Kushal

Because of the use of the hot glue gun to mount the engine we were able to launch several rockets today in rapid succession. Since we constructed the shorter fuselage today we were only able to test variables on the longer fuselage. Tomorrow we are going to test the shorter fuselage provided that the accelerometer yields good data.

-Mike S.

We found a good way to do launches, because the glue gun glue melts when it is hot we could launch a bunch of rockets in the same day. This made this great for us, we made a lot of progress. Tomorrow we are going to test the shorter fuselage since it had to dry overnight (the wood glue) after that we are pretty much done I think. Good stuff.

-Mike B.

Today we spent doing a large amount of launches. We felt that we were ready to test many of the variables in one day. We have found a quick way to exchange engines using the hot glue gun, which sped up our process. We tested all but the shorter fuselage, which we will do in the near future. We are fairly sure we received good data from the accelerometer again and are near finishing our trials.

-Scott

Rebel Rockets-Day 18

Today, we finished putting together the rocket that we started on yesterday. We added the fins, and they were spaced out almost perfectly. A better way of fitting the cone into the wider fuselage was made, and it made it look neater. This rocket had more padding on the inside than the last rocket, so this one was a bit heavier. We went to launch this rocket, with the accelerometer inside. The rocket did not travel very high at all. It probably went around 30-40 feet in the air. We would want the rocket to travel higher, however, since we are running out of time, we just need to get stuff done already. We then hooked up the accelerometer to the computer and then got the graph it outputted.

-Christian

Today we launched the rocket that we had begun work on yesterday. Probably due to the increased padding, this one traveled only about 40 feet in the air. Normally we would try to increase this, but due to our time constraints we will have to be satisfied with this height. We also downloaded the data from the accelerometer, and it again seems to have given us good data.

-Mike S.

We finished up the rocket we were making yesterday and it looks good. The fuselage was sturdy, the fins were spaced properly, and the accelerometer was padded and fit well. We also improved on how we placed the cone in the fuselage. We went to the school to test the rocket out but the rocket only went up around 30 feet. Then we went and outputted the graph from the accelerometer to our computer and the data gave us a similar graph as last time.

-Kushal

We worked on creating more rockets and then proceeded to doing another test launch. The rocket was built well and was sturdy, with extra packing to protect the accelerometer. The problem was that the extra packing added more weight, and so the rocket did not launch very high. This may not be a true problem, however, because the low height makes it easy to recover and keeps the accelerometer safe. Later in the day, we linked the accelerometer to the computer and got the data. It seemed to have worked out well and we will now be able to move on.

-Scott

We were able to do a new launch today. There was extra padding in the rocket to protect the rocket. Unfortunately, this caused the rocket to be heavier. This caused the rocket to go at a lower height. This helped to keep the rocket safer. It will also cause our data to have smaller changes. This will make the data harder to determine. I still believe that the rocket will work . The tests will work and we fill find out which variables will help the most.

-Ben W.

We did another launch today. We put a lot of padding in it just to be safe, but we think this made the rocket heavier so it didn't go as high. But this kept the rocket safer at least. However, the problem is is that this may make data harder to compare since we don't have the same amount of padding in each of the rockets, oh well.

-Mike B.

Rebel Rockets-Day 17

Today we made more parts for the newer rocket design. Since the diameter of the rocket is larger, there are less layers to place wood glue on, so it is very flimsy. We found some business card paper laying around, so we decided to use this for the new fuselages so that there is more rigidity to them. Also, we got the graph from the data that the accelerometer recorded yesterday. This is good because it means that the accelerometer is actually working fine. We decided on which fin types to test out for that variable. More thought was placed into coming up with a better way to fit in the cone into the wider tubes. Also, we had to look for a scale because we need the new rocket's mass for the calculations.

-Christian

Today we constructed the various parts for the variables that we will be testing. We also found some more rigid paper that has given our rocket more structural integrity, as well as discovering a better system for placing the cone in the top of the fuselage. We also got the graph from the accelerometer, which contains very good data and seems to be a positive sign for upcoming launches.

-Mike S.

We ended up making a lot of material today for our variable testing. Luckily, we found some better quality paper to make a more sturdy fuselage as the other fuselage was very flimsy. We found a better way to place the cone into the fuselage also. We also received our accelerometer graph so we know that the accelerometer works. The data also made sense so we know that we can finally test our variables.

-Kushal

We acquired the mass of the rocket today. This will allow us to get farther in the prediction equations. We also made some new parts for the wider rockets. We found some better paper to construct the fuselages and a better way to fit the cones in the fuselage. We also received the accelerometer graphs to confirm that the test worked. The graphs were very similar to graphs of other model rockets we had seen online, giving us more reassurance in our tests. Later in the day, we finished the equations for the force of drag and put them with the rest of our prediction equations. All that needs to be done is the integration and then the drawing of the displacement graph.

-Scott

Today, we created parts for the wider rockets. We made the new rockets out of card stock. This would allow the rockets to be much more structurally strong. We obtained the graph from the accelerometer. This was a good graph and allowed us to see how high the rocket went. We will be able to compare this graph to many others and figure out which variables affect the rocket the most.

-Ben W.

We made parts for the wider rockets today. We used card stock since it's thicker. This would give the rockets a stronger body and hopefully be better. We also got our first results from the accelerometer and it is pretty good, it gave us some good information. We can now compare graphs to see which variables are best for the rocket.

-Mike B.