Oh, I wish I could have some of the class pictures here! You should see their smiling faces! You've never seen students so eager to find the vertex of a parabola. This is how it rolled for me:
1) Practice, practice, practice quadratic equations.
2) Practice quadratic story problems about with height, distance, and time.
3) Practice some more and tell your students that they will be building rockets and applying quadratic techniques to discover how high their rockets fly!
I used the Teachers Pay Teachers activity found here. I made some minor adjustments like forgetting about the water bottle rocket. We used a custom PVC launcher with a sprinkler valve and electrical trigger. I also allowed students to design their own rockets as long as the tube was the dimension of the launcher.
The gist is this: based on how long your rocket flies you can determine how high it goes. I did have to disqualify one rocket that "floated" back to the ground so the equation wouldn't have applied there. The winning rocket went over 1100 ft with only 70 lbs of pressure in the launcher! Hint: Make sure students seriously REINFORCE the nose cone if you use this type of rocket.
This activity was amazing. All my classes are now begging to do it.
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| Sample student rockets. Check out those various designs. |
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| Eagerly awaiting a launch. |
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| Students pressurized the launcher for their own rockets. We used 70 lbs. |
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