The FORD Lounge

[Gary Lewis]

PVC potato cannons!Try ether. It works great. 🤔Gary have a look at soda bottle water rockets.All you need is a good bicycle pump and there's no danger of shrapnel or getting burned.Find a way to have fun, just for fun, with the children.Of course there's a physics lesson backloaded in there, so they might learn something.

Jim - There are BUNCHES of different ways to make those rockets!!! I'm gobsmacked with the variations.

 

But this one seems quite interesting. I've not yet figured out exactly how the release works, although I can see that the zip ties and coupler form a collet that holds the bottle until the coupler is pulled down. But how the coupler is pulled down isn't apparent to me, although in the still at the very start it looks like it may go under the central cross piece and then up.

 

[85lebaront2]

PVC potato cannons!

Try ether. It works great. 🤔

Gary have a look at soda bottle water rockets.

All you need is a good bicycle pump and there's no danger of shrapnel or getting burned.

Find a way to have fun, just for fun, with the children.

Of course there's a physics lesson backloaded in there, so they might learn something.

I had a water rocket as a kid in Norfolk, it had a pump that you actually launched it with. My brother was into the model rockets like you showed, we fired a bunch of the off when we lived in Virginia Beach. We used dad's WWII Navy binoculars to track them and once the parachute charge popped to figure out where it was coming down. We would launch them weekends and summers from the Shelton Park elementary school athletic field.

This is a story will interest you, one of my classmates at Norview was a very brilliant girl named Mary Edith Gress. Her dad fought with the school over the stereotypes that women should know how to cook and sew. During our 40th reunion she and I went and toured the labs, and found that some of the test tube wooden racks had been there at least 40 years. During this we were talking about the "test tube rocket", the experiment where you heat Manganese Dioxide (I believe) to generate oxygen. Everyone was warned to not let the tube cool until the line was removed from the collection bottle and to be careful not to set the rubber stopper on fire. Two girls who probably would have been better in Home Ec managed to draw water up the tube until it broke at which point they started heating again and set the rubber stopper on fire. End result, test tube with flaming rubber, came out of the clamp and disappeared through the open window with a nice whoosh.

[ArdWrknTrk]

I had a water rocket as a kid in Norfolk, it had a pump that you actually launched it with. My brother was into the model rockets like you showed, we fired a bunch of the off when we lived in Virginia Beach. We used dad's WWII Navy binoculars to track them and once the parachute charge popped to figure out where it was coming down. We would launch them weekends and summers from the Shelton Park elementary school athletic field.

This is a story will interest you, one of my classmates at Norview was a very brilliant girl named Mary Edith Gress. Her dad fought with the school over the stereotypes that women should know how to cook and sew. During our 40th reunion she and I went and toured the labs, and found that some of the test tube wooden racks had been there at least 40 years. During this we were talking about the "test tube rocket", the experiment where you heat Manganese Dioxide (I believe) to generate oxygen. Everyone was warned to not let the tube cool until the line was removed from the collection bottle and to be careful not to set the rubber stopper on fire. Two girls who probably would have been better in Home Ec managed to draw water up the tube until it broke at which point they started heating again and set the rubber stopper on fire. End result, test tube with flaming rubber, came out of the clamp and disappeared through the open window with a nice whoosh.

And this (like shop class) is why we have dumbed down education in this country.

I've said before that some lessons SHOULD be painful.

Bill, the transparent red nosed one with a white base and canted fins, so the thrust was not vectored by a moulded defect and it was spin stabilized like a rifled barrel?

I LOVED those things!

Lemme see if I can find one....

[ArdWrknTrk]

And this (like shop class) is why we have dumbed down education in this country.

I've said before that some lessons SHOULD be painful.

Bill, the transparent red nosed one with a white base and canted fins, so the thrust was not vectored by a moulded defect and it was spin stabilized like a rifled barrel?

I LOVED those things!

Lemme see if I can find one....

I knew it had to be Wham-O

Probably gone the same place as lawn darts 'Jarts' .... because of idiots.

[85lebaront2]

I knew it had to be Wham-O

Probably gone the same place as lawn darts 'Jarts' .... because of idiots.

Jim that is it, the game was to see (a) how much water you could get in and (b) how much pressure you could pump it up to. Fun because the "launch control" got soaked when it was released.

People wonder why we have a nation of wimps, lawyers are the problem with the "somebody ought to pay" ads on the boob tube.

[Dorsai]

Yes, you can hear the crack.

If you were directly under it (next to the pad) you wouldn't.

But the shock wave travels out as a cone.

Ah, I remember the first time I got a rocket to break the sound barrier....I think it was a G motor on the lightest rocket I could build that would remain aerodynamically stable. It shattered as soon as it hit Mach 1, I think I recovered a single fin.

Also...

And this (like shop class) is why we have dumbed down education in this country.

Shop class may be making a comeback, of sorts. My son has an 'engineering' class that looks for all the world like what shop ought to be in the 21st century. SolidWorks, 3-D printers, CNC mills, all the cool stuff. He and another kid were building a leaf blower-powered hovercraft as a special project before Bat Soup Fever put a stop to it.

[grumpin]

I knew it had to be Wham-O

Probably gone the same place as lawn darts 'Jarts' .... because of idiots.

We called them Polish cannons. Five pop cans, when they were tin, top and bottom cut out of four, a hole in the bottom side of the bottom one. Taped together, lighter fluid and a tennis ball as Gary mentioned.

Squirt fluid in it, shake it a bit, stuff the tennis ball in the top and light it in the little hole at the bottom.

It would shoot that tennis ball out of sight!

I was in the sixth or seventh grade and my teacher heard me talking about it. Asked me to bring in in and demonstrate it.

We went out to the football field and I lit it off. He had me explain what and why I was doing. Lit it off one more time. Got an A for that!

Cant imagine what they would say now if I brought one to school.

[Dorsai]

Cant imagine what they would say now if I brought one to school.

"Welcome to Guantanamo."

 

[grumpin]

Cant imagine what they would say now if I brought one to school.

"Welcome to Guantanamo."

 

[ArdWrknTrk]

We called them Polish cannons. Five pop cans, when they were tin, top and bottom cut out of four, a hole in the bottom side of the bottom one. Taped together, lighter fluid and a tennis ball as Gary mentioned.

Squirt fluid in it, shake it a bit, stuff the tennis ball in the top and light it in the little hole at the bottom.

It would shoot that tennis ball out of sight!

I was in the sixth or seventh grade and my teacher heard me talking about it. Asked me to bring in in and demonstrate it.

We went out to the football field and I lit it off. He had me explain what and why I was doing. Lit it off one more time. Got an A for that!

Cant imagine what they would say now if I brought one to school.

We used to bring our 22's to school, for riflery in the tunnel under the gym.

Ammo too!

Put them in our lockers until gym or after school.

And no one looked twice!

The riflery team were all responsible, and it wasn't viewed as a risk.

I really don't know what's happened to society, but everyone is scared.

Youth aren't even allowed to prove they can act responsibly anymore.

I'm going to stop now, before it gets to politics and ideology