ROCKET SCIENCE (: the blast!

rocket science rocks [2/8/06]
the lecturer was tobias, he is a phd student and he makes one hell of a teacher

the lecture began with a hilarious video from Japan, in which a man was sent flying just by pumping the bottles of water attached to him, and this provoked gales of laughter. well, more than that, it gave us an introduction to what we were going to learn. Newton's third law and the propulsion of a body. we learnt about fluid dynamics, and how it enables basilllisk lizards to skid though water, and tornados to take place. we all know how flight is enabled by benoulli's effect, but Tobias provided us with another insight, where we had to consider a particle moving in circular motion around the wing, and the centripedal force is provided by the net pressure acting per unit area. New insights are always pleasent revelations. then, we learnt poiseuille's law in which flow rate though a 'pipe' is determined. with the surface tension (force/length) equation, we were able to derive pressure. we used an ultracool cool equipment to measure surface tension. It turned out to be Tobias's own invention, using yogurt cover, his girlfriend's hair and stapers. he should get a patent or nobel prize,i thought. After a series of implicit differention and integration, we derived an equation relating the diameter of straw and bubble, the time taken for the bubble to empty and the length of the straw.finally we derived a value that was pretty close to the textbook reference. yay. using newton's second law and the conservation of momentum, and integrating somemore, we derived an relationship between change of velocity, initial speed and In (Mi/Mf). We also calculated the force one would experience while being propelled by a dozen pumped up bottles. shocking finds. our human example, chinyue could have flown off, accelerating at 96.6 m/s2. thereafter, we had fun with Tobias's vortex launchers and we had a chance to make our own! we went around 'popping each other'. good fun! (: it was fun and interactive, interesting and short, concise but not complex. the lecturer is always eating, mars bars and chocs. i think he is a genius or something.

alright, after lunch, we set off building our rockets. it was super cold and the winds were like ultra strong. we had to brave the cold to make our rockets. we faced some difficulties, including having our cg too far behind, thus affecting its flight. we tried everything from streamers to sharp heads to straw-stick lauching pads. we tried showing our creativity and coming up with some novel stuff, but in the end, it was practicality that made the rocket's flew. still, i think we should get a nobel prize for adding streamers to our rockets since ours is probably the first. i used socket the rocket to practice javelin and throws, what a laugh! ours manage to flew a respectable height, but Tobias rocket was like ultimate. it felt like a real rocket!

physics lecture after dinner, superposition

bridging and poka-ing after lessons to destress.

good life here

tata
crystal