Thursday, June 25, 2015

Furry rocket science

Today in science, we made and launched rockets, and we tested the flammability of cat fur.
 First we brushed Marty.
 Neighbor kid tried it on as a toupee.

 We built a mini fire pit on the driveway and put the giant furball in it.  There were several delays in the ignition process, because Marty was so interested in the flammability of her fur that we couldn't keep her away from the experiment.

The result? Cat fur appears to be flame resistant.  It sort of shrinks like cotton candy and puts out a terrible smoky stench, but doesn't actually ignite.  We thought the end product looked like a little elephant head.  See the ears at the top and the trunk at the bottom?

 
 The rocket is made of paper body, paper wings, styrofoam tip, tape, and glue. The launcher is a PVC pipe stuck in an empty soda bottle. You blow into the pipe to inflate the bottle, put the rocket on top, and stomp on the bottle.

After spending less than a buck on supplies, you wouldn't think the thing would do anything spectacular, but that rocket flew so high that I couldn't even get a picture of it!

 Of course everything always ends up stuck in the trees or the gutters.  The rocket got stuck in the tree. Noah threw the launcher at it to get it down, but the rocket remained in the tree, and so did the launcher. 


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