WATER ROCKET

WHAT IS IT?
A water rocket is a type of model rocket using water as its reaction mass. The water is forced out by a
pressurized gas, typically compressed air. A variety of designs are possible including multi-stage rockets.

ROCKET DESIGN
Size
The first consideration is the size of the rocket you want to construct. Looking around the shops,
you will see a wide range of fizzy drinks bottles available, and any of them can be modified to make a
water rocket. It’s common to find 500 ml, 1 litre, 2 litre and even 3 litre bottles. Larger bottles tend make
more spectacular launches, but if you want to go larger than three litres then you will need to construct a
rocket by joining together more than one bottle. There’s some tips on how to make multi-bottle
rockets later on in this section.
The volume of the rocket determines the maximum amount of energy that can be stored in the
compressed gas. The energy is proportional to both the pressure and the volume. There are limits to the
pressure that the rocket can sustain (5 atmospheres [or 75 psi] appears to be a safe working limit) and so
in order to increase the total amount of energy available, it is necessary to use a larger rocket. With a
little ingenuity it is possible to increase the volume with relatively little cost in terms of added weight.

Weight
The lower the weight of your water rocket, the better it will fly. Most of the work of designing a
lightweight rigid structure has been done for you already by the manufacturers of the fantastically strong
PET bottles. In order to capitalise on the strength-to-weight ratio of the bottles, you need to avoid adding
too much weight as you improve the aerodynamics of the bottle. It is also important to add the weight in
the correct places so that your rocket is aerodynamically stable. The distribution of weight along the
length of the rocket is one of the factors which determines whether it will fly like rocket, or like a bottle.
What’s the difference?
An aerodynamically stable rocket flies with its nose first, and should have a flight trajectory like a
beautiful smooth arc. In order to make your rocket fly ‘like a rocket’ rather than ‘like a bottle’, the weight
needs to be in the front half of the rocket. However depending on the design of your fins, this may or
may not be enough to ensure aerodynamically stable flight. One of the most important properties of your
rocket is the position of its centre of mass, sometimes called its centre of gravity.

Nose Cone
Cone shaped, but there is no need to make it excessively pointy. In fact, from a safety point of
view this is really quite undesirable.
 Weight may need to be placed in the nose. I am fond of using tape around a tennis ball, but
other designs use plasticine stuffed into a cardboard or plastic nose cone.

Body
• As smooth as possible.
• For a given rocket volume, long thin rockets tend to have lower drag than short fat rockets.

Fins
• Thin and light
• Arranged symmetrically around the body of the rocket: usually there are three or four of them.
• Positioned as far back along the rocket as possible

Parachute
In order to arrange for the parachute to deploy correctly, I have seen only two generic types of
mechanism. The first detects the height of the rocket, and the second activates at a pre-determined time.
Another possibility would be to have a mechanism based on the orientation of the rocket, but I have
never seen this implemented.
The first height-detecting mechanism I have seen consisted of a piece of thread attached to the
ground: it broke during the rapid acceleration phase.
The second height-detecting mechanism consisted of a rocketeer with a radio-control. The
parachute was stowed in the nose of the rocket beneath a cover which was held in place by nylon fishing
line. The radio control activated a heater that melted the fishing line, causing elastic bands to pull off the
cover, allowing the parachute to deploy. This ingenious mechanism worked perfectly. Most of the time.
This type of deployment mechanism could also be used with a timer.
The mechanisms based on timing involved a tiny clockwork timer which could be set to activate
after periods of just a few seconds or so. Arranging for the timer to be started on launch, and then deploy
correctly proved very tricky. When the mechanism worked, it worked perfectly, but frequently it
deployed the parachute on launch, or failed to deploy it all.
Aerodynamic Stability
For Rocket A (left) the centre of mass lies
further forwards along the rocket axis
than the centre of pressure. The extra drag
forces therefore act more on the back end
of the rocket and tend to ‘push it back into
line’. Technically we say the drag
forces exert a torque which acts about the
centre of mass to restore optimal flight
attitude.
For Rocket B (right) the centre of
mass lies further backwards along the rocket
axis than the centre of pressure. The extra
drag forces therefore act more on the
front end of the rocket and tend to ‘push it
even further out of line’.

ROCKET PROPERTIES
Launch Pressure
Increasing the pressure increases the stored energy at launch, which increases the maximum
speed attained by the rocket, and this increases the launch range, flight time, and maximum height.
However, you will find that increasing the launch pressure by a given amount (a) becomes harder to do
and (b) makes less and less difference. The reason is aerodynamic drag which increase very rapidly with
increasing launch speed, and ‘steals’ all the kinetic energy imparted to the rocket. If you have a launch
pressure of 5 atmospheres (75 psi) and are still looking for improvements, then its better to try reducing
drag rather than increasing the pressure further.

Launch Angle
If the rocket were an un-powered projectile with no aerodynamic drag, then the angle to give
the greatest range would be 45°. However, this is not the case for a water rocket, although the optimum
angle is unlikely to be very far from 45°. My feeling is that launching slightly more vertically than this
gives the best range, but you should check this for your rocket.
ROCKET PERFORMANCE
Height
This is a really interesting property of the rocket’s trajectory, but unfortunately one that is very
hard to measure. If you really want to know how high the rocket goes, then I would recommend a
straight up launch with a long length of sewing thread attached to the tail of the rocket. The thread
should be laid out on the ground, so that as the rocket increases in altitude it can lift the thread off the
ground. If you want to measure the height for a non-vertical launch, then (aside from complicated
triangulation from analysis of multiple video films) the only way I know of is to use an altitude data logger
available from model aircraft shops.

Time In The Air

PHYSICS BEHIND THE WATER ROCKET

USES

WHY DID I CHOOSE ‘WATER ROCKET’ ?