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Two different kinds of bottle rocket designs to soar into the sky

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You're never too young to be an astronaut! You might not be making a trip to the moon for a few more years, but you can launch your very own rocket right in your backyard. We'll show you how to build and launch a simple bottle rocket out of supplies you have at home. Then, we'll show you how to make a slightly more advanced rocket that'll fly even higher. Put on your safety goggles and prepare for liftoff!

1. Roll a piece of construction paper into a cone and cover it with duct tape. Roll the construction paper along the long edge, overlapping the corners to form a cone shape. Use a piece of duct tape to secure the cone so that it doesn't unroll. Then, cover the rest of the cone in duct tape to make it more durable. This is the nose of your rocket, which will make it more aerodynamic, helping it fly farther.

To make your rocket a bit safer, tape one half of a plastic egg over the tip of the cone, which gives it a blunt tip that won't hurt anyone when it falls.

2. Tape the nose cone to the bottom of a 2-liter (68 fl oz) soda bottle. Position the cone over the base of the bottle, then use duct tape to fix it in place. Do your best to tape it onto the bottle as straight as possible, taking care not to make it crooked, which might make it so that the rocket doesn't fly as straight.

3. Cut out 4 cardboard triangles and tape them around the center of the bottle. Use scissors to cut triangles out of cardboard, making each triangle about 4 inches (10 cm) wide and 7 inches (18 cm) long. These are the fins of the rocket, which stabilize it in the air. Then, use duct tape to attach the fins around the nozzle of the bottle, so that they point toward the cone. Place a bit of duct tape on either side of each fin, and evenly space them around the bottle.

To make sure your rocket can stand on its own when you launch it, attach the fins so that they extend about 2-3 inches (5.1-7.6 cm) past the nozzle of the bottle.

To help you evenly space the fins, tape the first fin anywhere around the nozzle of the rocket. Then tape the second fin on the opposite side of the bottle. Tape your third fin between those two, and the fourth fin opposite the third fin.

4. Tape Play-Doh or clay around the nozzle of the bottle to add weight. Roll a bit of clay into a log about 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick, then wrap it around the bottle's nozzle and use duct tape to secure it in place. This the is the "ballast" of the rocket, which adds weight that helps stabilize the rocket.

Alternatively, tape 5-10 quarters or other coins around the nozzle of the bottle to add weight.

5. Fill the bottle halfway with water. Pour about 1 liter (0.26 US gal) of water into the bottle. When you launch your rocket, you'll pump air into the inside with a bicycle pump. Then, the water will trap the air inside until the bottle can't hold any more air. The pressure pushes all the water out the bottom, providing enough force to launch the rocket!

6. Poke a hole through a cork and place the cork in the bottle's nozzle. Use a nail to make a small hole through the center of a cork. Hold the nail with pliers to avoid injuring yourself. Then, stuff the cork into the nozzle of the bottle. Make sure not to cover the cork's hole with tape, though.

1. Insert the needle of a bicycle pump into the hole in the cork. Use a standing bicycle pump, the kind that has a lever you push down on to inflate a tire. Screw the needle attachment to the nozzle of the pump, then push the needle into the hole in the cork of your bottle rocket.

2. Stand the rocket on its fins on a flat surface. Find a level surface, like a sidewalk or the asphalt of a parking lot, to launch your rocket. Or, launch it in the center of a yard or a park, laying down a piece of cardboard for a flat surface. With the bike pump attached to the cork, stand the rocket upright, using its fins to keep it steady.

Make sure there's nobody else around when you launch the rocket to avoid hurting someone when it falls back down to earth. Also make sure there are no windows or breakable objects nearby.

3. Quickly pump the lever of the bike pump to shoot your rocket. Stand next to the bike pump and work the lever up and down rapidly to fill the rocket with air. Watch the bubbles rise through the water inside the rocket, adding pressure to the inside. Keep pumping until the rocket gathers enough pressure and achieves liftoff!

The water will shoot out everywhere when the bottle rocket takes off, so be prepared to get a bit wet.

Your rocket blasts off because the force off the water and air exiting through the nozzle pushes it off the ground.

Be cautious once you start pumping and do not approach the rocket, even if it appears that nothing is happening with the launch, as this can lead to injury.

1. Grab two 2-liter (68 fl oz) bottles and cut off the cap end of one bottle. Use scissors or a box cutter to remove the top ⅓ of a plastic bottle. Work slowly and carefully to make sure you don't hurt yourself, and that the cut is as neat as possible. Cut a soda bottle that's slightly larger than the second, intact bottle so that you can tape them together later. Keep your second 2-liter (68 fl oz) bottle intact.

Cutting off the cap end of the bottle will make the rocket more aerodynamic and durable. A rounded end is also softer so it will do less damage to any objects if the rocket hits something when it lands.

2. Stuff clay or newspaper into the cut bottle to add weight. Place a golf-ball sized wad of clay or Play-Doh into the bottom of the cut bottle. Or, wad up a few pages of newspaper and place it in the bottom of the bottle. This is the ballast of your rocket, which will add weight and help the rocket stay stable in the air. Secure the ballast inside the bottle with duct tape.

Or, pour 10-12 pennies into the bottom of the cut bottle as your ballast, and hold them in place with duct tape.

3. Place the intact bottle inside the cut bottle and tape them together. Insert the bottom of the intact bottle into the opening of the cut bottle that holds the ballast. Make sure the bottles overlap by about 2-3 inches (5.1-7.6 cm), then secure them together by wrapping a generous amount duct tape around where they meet.

4. Cut 4 triangles out of cardboard and fix them to the bottles with duct tape. Use scissors to cut out 4 triangles that are 4 inches (10 cm) wide and 7 inches (18 cm) long. Then, secure them around the taped-together bottles, toward the nozzle, with duct tape, making sure they're evenly spaced. These are the fins of your rocket, which will make it fly straighter through the air.

To make sure your rocket can stand on its own when you launch it, attach the fins so that they extend about 2-3 inches (5.1-7.6 cm) past the nozzle of the rocket.

5. Fill the intact bottle halfway with water. Add 1 litre (34 fl oz) of water to the bottle. You'll launch your rocket by pumping it full of air with a bike pump. The water will trap the air inside until the bottle can't hold anymore air. The pressure will pop the cork off the end and shoot the water down at the ground, propelling the rocket into the air.

6. Poke a small hole in a cork and insert the cork into the bottle's nozzle. Use a nail to make a hole through the center of a cork. Wear gloves or use pliers to hold the nail to avoid injuring yourself. Then, squeeze the cork into the nozzle of the bottle. Make sure it's secure!

Add New Question

Is this safe for school?

Yes. In fact, bottle rockets are a common school science project!

What kind of bottle do I have to use?

A good type of bottle would just be a regular 1L soda bottle such as a Coke bottle.

Is there any easier way to make a model of a rocket?

Get an empty bottle and put wings on the side. Add vinegar and baking soda. Put it on the ground upside-down, and it will fly up.

See more answers
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This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Luke Smith, MFA. Luke Smith is a wikiHow Staff Writer. He's worked for literary agents, publishing houses, and with many authors, and his writing has been featured in a number of literary magazines. Now, Luke writes for the content team at wikiHow and hopes to help readers expand both their skillsets and the bounds of their curiosity. Luke earned his MFA from the University of Montana. This article has been viewed 2,087,318 times.

Updated: September 26, 2023

To build a bottle rocket, start by rolling a piece of paper into a cone and covering the outside of it with duct tape. Then, attach the cone to the bottom of an empty plastic bottle and cut out 4 cardboard triangles to make your rocket's fins. Attach the cardboard to the bottle and then fill up the bottle with water. Once you've done that, poke a hole in a cork and plug the opening of the bottle with it. Finally, attach a bicycle pump valve to the cork. To learn how to launch your bottle rocket, scroll down!

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 2,087,318 times.

"With as dry as the midwest has been, it would have been a bad idea to use class C motors (fire hazard), so using a air powered water filled bottle rocket was a perfect idea for a bunch of 9 year old kids to have fun!" ..." more

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How to Build a Bottle Rocket: Simple Step-by-Step Instructions

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Two different kinds of bottle rocket designs to soar into the sky You're never too young to be an astronaut! You might not be making a trip to the moon for a few more years, but you can launch your very own rocket right in your backyard....

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Why don't more people appreciate science? Personally, I believe it has something to do with science communication and the way we teach science in our schools.

With this in mind, here are a couple amazing scientific facts that I hope will inspire you to learn something new every day - they've certainly done so for me. However, this list is much too short; keep it growing by adding your own science facts in the comments section.

1. There is enough DNA in the average person's body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back - 17 times

The human genome (the genetic code in each human cell) contains 23 DNA molecules (called chromosomes), each containing from 500,000 to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled - about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body, so if you were to uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and place the molecules end to end, it would sum to a total length of 2×10 ¹⁴ meters - enough for 17 Pluto round-trips (t he distance from the sun to Pluto and then back again is 1.2×10 ¹³ meters). As an added bonus, you should know that we each share 99% of our DNA with every other human - just to show that we're far more alike than different.

2. The average human body carries ten times more bacterial cells than human cells

It's funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops, or make a grimace when someone sneezes near us, when, in fact, each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you could fill a half-gallon jug - there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don't worry, though: most of these bacteria are helpful. In fact, we couldn't survive without them.

For example, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked despite the fact that they didn't eat any more than they had before. Gut bacteria is also very important for maintaining immunity. ( image source).

3. It takes a photon up to 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction. To travel from the sun's core to the sun's surface ( 696,000 kilometers) so it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps.

The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, some of the light that reaches us today is energy produced millions of years ago. Amazing!

4. At over 2,000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

Coral reefs consist of huge numbers of individual coral polyps (soft-bodied, invertebrate animals) that are linked together by tissue. The Great Barrier Reef is an interlinked system of about 3,000 reefs and 900 coral islands divided by narrow passages, located just beneath the surface of the Coral Sea. Spanning more than 2,000 km and covering an area of some 350,000 sq km, it is the largest living structure on Earth and the only one visible from space. However, this fragile coral colony is beginning to crumble, battered by the effects of climate change, pollution, and manmade disasters.

5. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean

A teaspoon of water (about 5 mL) contains 2×10 ²³ water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. Moreover, if you'd laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon down end to end, you'd end up with a length of 50 billion km - 10 times the width of our solar system.

6. In an entire lifetime, the average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world

The average moderately active person takes around 7,500 step/day. If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you'll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math; the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles - which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator.

7. There are actually over two dozen states of matter (that we know of)

Everybody knows that there at least three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. If you're a little bit more versed in physics, you also know about the fourth fundamental state of matter called plasma - a hot ionized gas, with prime examples including lightning or neon signs. But beyond these common states of matter, scientists have discovered a myriad of exotic states of matter that occur under special conditions. One of them is the Bose-Einstein condensate, where atoms chilled to only 0.000001 degrees above absolute zero start behaving like waves, rather than particles as they ought to on the macroscopic scale. Essentially, the atoms behave like one super atom, acting in unison.

Another interesting exotic state of matter is represented by time crystals - regular, boringly ordered crystals with a twist: A fourth dimension, time, is added so that the material exhibits different periodic structures over time. What makes these crystals particularly remarkable has less to do with the fact that they repeat in time but rather more with the fact that they're intrinsically out of equilibrium. Because time crystals are never able to settle down, say into a diamond or ruby, there's a lot we can learn from them.

8. Killer whales are actually dolphins

Despite their name, killer whales or orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family. Technically, orcas are also whales because delphinids belong to the Cetacean order within the toothed whale ( Odontoceti) suborder. However, the term whale is typically reserved for baleen whales of the Mysticeti suborder.

The major physical feature that ensures orcas are dolphins is the presence of a melon - a fatty deposit that assists the animals in echolocation and only exists in dolphins.

Orcas are highly intelligent, highly adaptable and able to communicate and coordinate hunting tactics. They are extremely fast swimmers and have been recorded at speeds of up to 54kph! A wild orca pod can cover over 160 kilometers a day, foraging, and socializing.

9. Grasshoppers have ears in their bellies

Unlike humans, grasshoppers do not have ears on the side of their heads. Like the ears of people, the grasshopper sound detector is a thin membrane called a tympanum, or "eardrum". In adults, the tympanum is covered and protected by the wings, and allows the grasshopper to hear the songs of its fellow grasshoppers.

The grasshopper tympanum is adapted to vibrate in response to signals that are important to the grasshopper. Male grasshoppers use sounds to call for mates and to claim territory. Females can hear the sound that males make and judge the relative size of the male from the pitch of the call (large males make deeper sounds). Other males can hear the sounds and judge the size of a potential rival. Males use this information to avoid fights with larger male grasshoppers or to chase smaller rivals from their territory.

10. You can't taste food without saliva

In order for food to have taste, chemicals from the food must first dissolve in saliva. It's only once they've been dissolved in a liquid that the chemicals can be detected by receptors on taste buds. During this process, some salivary constituents chemically interact with taste substances. For example, salivary buffers (e.g., bicarbonate ions) decrease the concentration of free hydrogen ions (sour taste), and there are some salivary proteins that may bind with bitter taste substances.

Here's a quick science experiment to test this out - get out a clean towel, and rub your tongue dry; then place some dry foods on your tongue, one by one, such as a cookie, pretzel, or some other dry food. After this session, drink a glass of water and repeat. Did you feel a difference?

11. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C, the lowest temperature possible), it becomes a liquid with surprising properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!

We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don't know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states - one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of -452°F (-269°C), it can suddenly do things that other fluids can't, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid - a liquid that flows without friction.

"If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course, it's stopped moving," says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

This happens because atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down.

"But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later," he says, "it would still be moving".

12. If Betelgeuse exploded, transitioning from the red supergiant stage to supernova, it would light our sky continuously for two months. It could happen anytime - within a couple of thousand years, tomorrow or even now

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth, yet it's already one of the brightest stars in Earth's sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a supergiant star - the largest type of star in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times greater than that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the orbit of Mars. Because it's near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova.

13. Octopuses have three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood

Two of the hearts work exclusively to move blood beyond the animal's gills, while the third keeps circulation flowing for the organs. When the octopus swims, the organ heart stops beating, which explains why these creatures prefer to crawl rather than swim (it exhausts them).

An octopus also has nine brains - well, sort of. There's one 'main' brain where all the analysis and decision making takes place and eight ancillary brains - one at the base of each arm - that function as preprocessors for all the information obtained by that arm. Two-thirds of an octopus' neurons reside in its arms, which can independently figure out how to open a shellfish, for instance, while the main brain is busy doing something else.

Our blood is red due to the fact that it contains iron-based hemoglobin to transport oxygen to cells. Octopuses, on the other hand, use the copper-based cyanoglobin, which performs the same function, albeit less efficiently - this makes octopuses have less stamina than you might expect.

14. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body

You have about 5 liters of blood in your body (at least, most people do) and the average heart pumps about 70 mL of blood out with each beat. A healthy heart also beats around 70 times a minute. So, if you multiply the amount of blood that the heart can pump by the number of beats in a minute, you actually get about 4.9 liters of blood pumped per minute, which is almost your whole body's worth of blood. In just a minute, the heart pumps the entire blood volume around your body.

15. The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies.

There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100 billion Earth-like planets. Still think we're alone?

16. Hot water freezes faster than cold water

In certain conditions, hot water can freezes faster than cold water - a counter-intuitive phenomenon known as the Mpemba effect. There is a number of proposed explanations for the Mpemba effect, including faster evaporation of hot water that reduces the volume left to freeze, the formation of a frost layer on cold water that insulates it, or different concentrations of solutes such as CO2. The phenomenon is named after schoolboy Erasto Mpemba from Tanzania, who in the 1960s claimed in his science class that ice cream would freeze faster if it was heated first before being put in the freezer.

17. About 1% of our genes come from plants, fungi, and other germs

According to research from the University of Cambridge, humans have evolved with genes acquired from plants and fungi. But how did they get there? Rather than a straightforward single branching tree where genes are inherited from parents, scientists argue that sometimes foreign genes may spread by a process known as horizontal gene transfer. For instance, different species of bacteria often exchange genes via viruses.

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17 Quick Science Facts that Will Blow Your Mind

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Why don't more people appreciate science? Personally, I believe it has something to do with science communication and the way we teach science in our schools. With this in mind, here are a couple amazing scientific facts that I hope will inspire you to learn something new every day - they've certainly done so for me.

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Plastic heavy-duty trash bag

Plastic sandwich bags

String

Scissors

Hole punch

Eggs

1. Cut a square from the garbage bag that is 20 inches on each side.

2. Use a hole punch to punch one hole in each corner of the piece of plastic garbage bag.

3. Cut four pieces of 20-inch long string.

4. Thread a piece of string through each hole in the bag and secure by tying the string firmly on each corner.

5. Place one egg into the plastic sandwich bag, twist the top of the bag and tie closed with the loose ends of strings. This will also attach the parachute to the bag holding the egg.

6. Repeat the experiment with different sizes of bags and strings (the length of the strings should match the size of one side of the square).

7. Think about what you know about wind resistance. Which size bag do you think will allow the egg to drift to the ground slowly? Make a note about you think will happen. This is called the hypothesis.

8. Take the egg parachute to the second floor of your house and have a parent help you drop it from the window

9. How fast did the egg fall with each size of parachute? When did the egg break and when didn't it? Write your observations in a notebook. Does the experiment prove your hypothesis or not?

The largest parachute falls the slowest and should cause the least amount of damage to the egg.

When you drop the egg, the strings that are attached to the sandwich bag pull down and this open the bag to full size, which creates a large surface area and more wind resistance. More wind resistance slows down the descent of the egg.

You can explain the results of this experiment with the concept of resistance. Wind resistance, also called drag, is simply a force that acts on a solid object. Car designers often factor in wind resistance when designing a car to help it have greater fuel efficiency and accelerate to high speeds more easily. In this experiment, your goal was to create more wind resistance to slow the speed of the object. The largest parachute created more resistance and slowed the descent of the egg the most.

The experiment shows that the size of the parachute makes a difference in the speed of descent, but what if you tried different materials for the parachute? Repeat the experiment with a parachute made from construction paper, plastic grocery bags or other items you have around your house. Do you think the results will vary? Come up with a new hypothesis each time you try new materials and see if your guesses are correct. You'll learn so much about wind resistance that even Humpty Dumpty may thank you.

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Warning is hereby given that not all Project Ideas are appropriate for all individuals or in all circumstances. Implementation of any Science Project Idea should be undertaken only in appropriate settings and with appropriate parental or other supervision. Reading and following the safety precautions of all materials used in a project is the sole responsibility of each individual. For further information, consult your state's handbook of Science Safety.

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Egg Drop Parachute | Science project | Education.com

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Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to construct a parachute that will deliver an egg safely to the ground. Good luck!

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Middle School Physical Science Projects | Education.com

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