Step 3 Engineering
A Visit from Combilift
We took part in the Junior Achievement project and our visitor was from local engineering firm COMBILIFT
Diarmuid told us all about his work at Combilift and what goes on there.... A Visit to Combilift!We are organising a visit to the Combilift factory to see how all the forklifts are made. We are really looking forward to it!
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Design and Make a Foam Rocket - Mr Buckley's roomActivity DESIGN AND MAKE A FOAM ROCKET - and investigate its flight path. 5th and 6th Class Knockconan N.S
Equipment needed For each rocket: • Foam pipe insulation (½” diameter) – 30 cm length • Wide rubber band - (6 mm. size 64 works well) • Duct tape • Cardboard or styrofoam food tray (for fins) • Scissors • Long tape measure • Metre stick Background information This rocket is based on stored energy. When you pull back the elastic band, the elastic band stores this energy. When you let it go, it releases this energy as it returns to its original length. The foam rocket is stabilised by the fins, which keep it pointed in the desired direction Trigger Questions asked by the teacher What are rockets? (Cylinders full of materials which produce gases). How do they work? (Gases going out the back of the rocket push it forward, like an untied blown-up balloon goes forward when you let it go and the air goes out the back) What are rockets used for? (Sending space machines into the air with great force to get outside Earth’s gravity) Design and Make a Foam Rocket The children followed the following instructions from the teacher and we all worked individually to create our own rockets • Using scissors, cut one 30-cm. length of pipe insulation for each rocket. • Cut four equally-spaced slits, each about 8 cm. long, at one end of the tube. This will be the tail of the rocket. The fins will go into these slits. Front of rocket: • Cut a 12 cm. length of duct tape down the middle to make two pieces. Place one piece over the other, sticky to shiny side, to make the tape extra-strong. • Place a (single strand of a) rubber band across the top of the foam tube. Tape the rubber band down to the tube, using the double strength duct tape at right angles to the rubber band. Press the tape down to the sides of the tube. • Reinforce this tape with another length of tape wrapped around the top end of the side of the tube. Fins end of rocket: • Cut four fins from cardboard (or Styrofoam food tray). A suggested way is as follows: • Cut a 10 cm. square, draw a diagonal and cut along the diagonal (forming 2 isosceles triangles). Then cut half-way down the height of one triangle and half-way up the other. Now nest the fins together, and place them in the slits. • Close off the slits with another piece of duct tape wrapped around the foam tube. Launching the Rocket: • Loop the rubber band over the end of the metre stick. Pull on the fins end of the rocket, holding it below the fins, as you point it up into the air. After we created the rocket we all proceeded to fire them in the school yard. We used the metre stick to do this. We discussed and demonstrated the best angle to fire the rocket from and after experimenting we concluded that the rocket flew furthest when fired from a 45 degree angle. Fair testing. In order to make a fair test we concluded that we would need to make certain factors the same for all tests. Such as:
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