The 6th graders at Goodrich have been participating in a Genius Hour activity. Genius Hour encourages students to brainstorm ideas and generate their own research question. This activity requires students to use critical thinking in order to answer their propose research question. Usually, Genius Hour is conducted individually, but in Mr. Schrom's & Mr. Neitling's classroom, we decided to work as a small group. Our Genius Hour topic was a mutual decision based on a topic we found very interesting: Water Rockets! For more information on Genius Hour click on the link below.
One Goodrich 6th grader was thrilled to give you readers a summary of the experiment we conducted. Here's what Connor had to say:
Our Genius Hour Question: How high will a plastic bottle travel using air and water pressure?
In our 6th grade "Genius Hour" we are doing water rockets. The water rockets we built were made from using: two liter pop bottles, a cork, a nail, packing tape, foam poster board, and a bicycle air pump. The first step was to construct our rocket. Once we constructed our rocket we launch them by filling with water then putting in are cork, the air pump needle will then be inserted through the cork and into the bottle filled with water. As we pump the air into the corked bottle, air and water pressure will build up, causing the cork to pop out and launch the rocket into the air. Once we build and launch our rockets we will measure distance, calculate speed, and find ways to improve our rockets. We launched our rocket twice, the first launch I filled my pop bottle with 350ml of water and after we used the bicycle pump to create air pressure in the bottle, it went about five feet. During our second launch I filled it with 400ml of water, this time it went about 10 feet. Out of my classmates' rockets, Joahan's went the highest, his went about 12 feet. The different amounts of water may have caused my second launch to go higher. We will continue our research and make any changes that might make our rockets go higher! Watch my video at the side of this page and I hope our idea inspires the rest of you geniuses out there!
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