Science Project: Rocketry

Fran and Ammon stopped by for a few days and we had a great time launching Ammon's new rocket a few times. If you're like me, you're wondering "How fast does a model rocket go, anyway?"

Take a look at it in action:



This is from about 25 yards away. We don't get to see the whole flight, but we get enough of it to estimate its terminal velocity. Using a program out of Kenyon College, I tracked its motion frame-by-frame.

I calibrated the distances in the video with the height of my brother-in-law. Ammon is ~68 inches tall, which makes him about 13 pixels tall at 25 yards.

The green "plusses" in the frame on the right are the data points I used to figure out the terminal velocity of the rocket:

A couple of conclusions from this:
1. That max speed is 38 meters per second, or about 90 miles an hour!
2. Think I'm just too white and nerdy.