Materials Needed:

Scissors

Snap off Top Container or Film Canister

Tape

Decoration: Stickers, Markers, Construction Paper

Alka-Seltzer

Water

Get container with snap off top. I found this one in my medicine cabinet. If you can not get a hold of a film canister or container with snap off top buy it here for 47 cents:http://www.filmcanisterrockets.com

Roll construction paper onto the canister.

 

Tape the construction paper on

Cut out a circle from construction paper

Make a cut to the middle of the circle

Bring ends in and fold into a cone shape, tape it together

 

Place it on top of the container you used. Make sure its not on the end where liquid is going to go inside the container.

 

Cut out four triangles

Tape it on

Have the child color and decorate rocket with markers, stickers, crayons

How to Launch Rocket:

Roll up some tape and place on the inside of cover of container

Put an Alka-Seltzer  capsule on top of the tape

Put some water inside container. The less you put the higher the rocket will shoot up! have your child guess if more or less water will make the rocket go higher.

Place the rocket down outside and watch it shoot up!!!

We keep a Science Experiment Journal for all our experiments. Here we post pictures, activities, and questions for the experiment.

Here we put pictures of Jade doing the experiment

Some activities for rockets

Lab report, questions about the experiment to get the child to think and learn about the Science behind the experiment.

Jade doing the activities, coloring the rocket by parts. She learned the names of the parts of a rocket. You can download these free Rocket Printables here in my blog.

Explain the Science behind the experiment to your children. The Alka-Seltzer tablet fizzes, carbon dioxide is released inside the container. Pressure from the gas builds and eventually pops the lid off. This action it is an example of Newton’s Third Law of Motion – “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. The gas rushing out of one end of the canister (the action) causes your rocket to move in the opposite direction (the reaction). This is exactly how all rockets work whether you use an effervescing tablet as your fuel or a chemical rocket propellant like they do at NASA.

Warning: be careful the rocket it is not pointing at a person or too close to a person.

See video of us shooting our rocket very soon!!