TOY ROCKET PROJECT : DESCRIPTION

A team of students (model development team) develop a Newtonian model that will predict the vertical flight behavior of a toy rocket they have built. The model involves certain input data the team will have to get via measurements:

(1) Mass of solid fuel

(2) Mass of rocket body and rocket motor shell

(3) Thrust versus time of rocket motor

(4) Aerodynamic drag coefficient of rocket body

A spreadsheet it used to take the mathematical model through several hundred small time steps, one of the output variables being the predicted maximum altitude of the toy rocket. The team checks the adequacy of their Newtonian model by flying the toy rocket and measuring its maximum altitude using triple triangulation.