Flying with water rockets

[Bruno Ogorelec]

You absolutely must see this:

http://poststuff5.entensity.net/053005/ ... etpack.wmv

[Johansson]

!!!LOL!!!

Fantastic! I guess the guy didn´t know what was waiting...

//Anders

[larry cottrill]

Bruno, that is hilarious ... a superb example of "Don't try this at home."

That, in my opinion, is one gutsy sucker ... obviously a young, unmarried type.

I especially love the shots of his gleeful friends pumping up the rockets for all they're worth, and the little thumbnail insets of the spectators in a laughing fit. I also like the guys throwing flotation devices about ten or fifteen feet out before launch. Can't be too careful.

Note in the closeup how there's very little water in the bottles. The actual acceleration time is very short, probably just the first split second. Afterward, with no thrust direction, the aerodynamics are totally unstable, and the guy just sort of 'Frisbees' out there. Good crotch strap padding required for that first little kick, too!

L Cottrill

[Mark]

I've always liked plastic bottles. I have a 2 liter Coke bottle that is still holding pressure since I pumped it up on Tuesday, March 17, 1992. I can still put my entire weight on it with one foot and it will hold me up. I weigh almost 200 pounds. I drilled a hole in the cap and pulled a car valve stem through the hole, in that way I could pump it up with a tire pump. I have a little desk calendar quote taped to it recording the day I did this. I was going to make a large boat out of several hundred of them. I wanted to see how long they would hold pressure! You should have seen how interesting the forms you can make with hundreds of collected bottles in your living room, setting them in all sorts of eye catching arrangements.
Then too, the bottles are a riot spritzed with methanol and sparked with a hole in the lid for a nozzle. Zero to far down range in an ear piercing second. With methanol on a cool dry day, it flies faster than your eye can follow.
There are a thousand uses for PET plastic bottles. They are very strong too. Here is a clear green plastic notebook made of recycled bottles if you can make it out from my scanner.
Mark

[Mark]

Here is a piece of soft, lush, green carpeting made from recylced bottles, unfortunately I had to scan the reverse side, for some reason my scanner sees the fabric as gray, even though the fibers are a thick beautiful dark green and of a carpet quality you would love. Also pictured are a 2 and 3 liter bottle before they are melted by a quartz heater and blown into their respective shapes.
Mark

PS That little 2 liter bottle you buy with Coke costs or rather did cost 11 cents to make, the price passed on to you about 10 years ago. Now they are making the bottles thinner and using a cheaper plastic that is blown and layer with the better PET plastic. I don't have any idea how much a 2 liter bottle costs these days.
Mark

[Mark]

The old bottle still holding pressure from this date! I was only hoping for a few months. Of course if you stressed the cap I am sure it would fail, the key would be to protect the cap from any force that would damage the blue plastic liner material that comes with the cap that seals so well.
Mark

[Mark]

And for a cannon sound you can put a cup of dry ice chunks in a PET bottle with some water and listen to the amazing sound it makes. This was shot at a 500th of a second.
Mark

[Mark]

And this one is a 3 liter plastic Coke bottle at 1000th of a second. You eye doesn't see anything, but your ears hear a terrific noise.
Mark

[Mark]

More uses for your plastic bottles.
Mark

[Mark]

Here's some bottles, like jam jars, that are just thrown away, when in fact you could be making so many things out of them. I took a tour of the landfill and was shown a large brick made of plastic used as a door stop, it seemed pretty strong and heavy. I think they make fence posts and outdoor decks out of it now, that last much longer than lumber could ever hope to.
And hey look, there is our insect friend, pretending to be a buzz bomb.
Mark

[Mark]

I know this isn't a rocket topic yet again, if you want to move it to tidbits, fine, but I thought this was interesting too, sails made of PET plastic bottles. You could make your entire boat out of PET and sail the world.
Mark

[Mark]

And although plastic jam jars or pulsejet airplane wings aren't on this list, I don't see why we couldn't come up with some other uses besides a fuel tank or an air bottle for a quick start design.
Mark

[Mark]

Page 2.
Mark

[Mark]

Bruno, that is hilarious ... a superb example of "Don't try this at home."

That, in my opinion, is one gutsy sucker ... obviously a young, unmarried type.

I especially love the shots of his gleeful friends pumping up the rockets for all they're worth, and the little thumbnail insets of the spectators in a laughing fit. I also like the guys throwing flotation devices about ten or fifteen feet out before launch. Can't be too careful.

Note in the closeup how there's very little water in the bottles. The actual acceleration time is very short, probably just the first split second. Afterward, with no thrust direction, the aerodynamics are totally unstable, and the guy just sort of 'Frisbees' out there. Good crotch strap padding required for that first little kick, too!

L Cottrill

I can remember in college, my "clever" roommate wanted to explode a plastic bottle of mine at night in the dorm so he took it, filled it with some of my left over dry ice and water and quickly capped it and then he and another guy took the mattress off the bed which was thinner than an ordinaray mattress and folded it in half with the bottle sandwiched inside. Then they sat on the mattress. Then we all waited patiently. Although these guys were graduate students, I didn't think it was the smartest thing to do. Well, the bottle exploded and you could actually see them lift up a bit from the sudden pressure and then they unfolded the mattress and there was a big shredded hole and he muttered some explicative I think. It was his mattress that he blasted.
Mark