I had this long post made up, and at the last minute decided it was just too much about work. Call me paranoid I guess. You hear about the whole "Oh my gawd, don't blog about work or you will get fired" crap. I guess I buy into that. It's sad really, because it's a pretty funny story. If you ever talk to me in person sometime, have me tell you the "The 50,000th bug" story.
I ran into my old physics teacher at the gym last night. It was fun seeing him, I suppose he was surprised I remembered his full name. He said he remembered me, although I just assumed he was being nice. But then again, if there was any teacher I had that would actually be able to remember students from 14 years ago, it would be Mr. Michels. We chatted for a bit, and I told him how over the years I always love to tell people the model rocket story.
The model rocket experiment involved launching a rocket and determining the height it reached using a known distance on the ground and a measured angle. Simple trigonometry. I had my normal rocket for the experiment, and also one of the smallest rockets you could buy, typically called "The Mosquito". I painted it all black, because that was cool. This rocket could only fit the smallest possible engine, size A.
After the experiment, I launched my Mosquito. It basically disappeared the moment it launched. It was too small to follow... Well, that was fun. Later on, someone ended up finding it in the field and brought it back to me. Mr. Michels had an idea. Let's tape the largest possible engine (size D) around it and then launch it! Hell ya, that sounds like a great idea!
The result? Just a little too much engine. It launched so fast, it got stuck on the wire of the launch pad, which fell over, and then shot straight off along the ground into some nearby woods. Mr. Michels looked around, and goes: "Don't tell anyone about that!"
When I mentioned to him that I loved to tell that story, he said that he still tells it in his classroom too! I'm sure his version is a little toned down, but it was fun to hear him say that. He also said that they had a new group simply called "The Rockets". They have competitions where they have to launch a rocket with an egg and altimeter inside, and reach an exact height of 750 feet. Then the rocket has to land within 45 seconds. Apparently the AVHS team has made it to nationals 4 times.
Googled up some links:
AVHS Rocket Team
Rocket Team seeks rarified air of national title (Sept 2007)
1 comment:
Nothing about trigonometry is simple as far as I'm concerned. You should have titled your post "The model rocket story." :)
Post a Comment