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  • Hi, I'm Colin Kilbane and I'm going to show you how to make a very simple water rocket.

  • Now, what we've got here, pop bottle. This is basically our water rocket here. Now, well,

  • how way a water rocket works is you put water in, and then you pressurize it. You pump air

  • into it, and that's what this complicated apparatus here is for. I've built many different

  • launchers over the years, but I've never been able to build one quite as nice as I was able

  • to buy, at sciencekit.com. A wonderful little launcher here. The ah, stand is extra. The

  • original launcher just has a pair of stakes you can hammer into the ground, and that works

  • just as well. But if you're working on concrete or asphalt, the stand is essential. I've taken

  • a second water bottle here and I cut the top in order to make it a little bit more aerodynamic.

  • You can slide the top right on the top. Now, if you're really fancy, you can go ahead and

  • add some fins on there. My friend, Tim, built this wonderful one. It's got a recovery system,

  • fins and everything. These fins are off an old bottle rocket that's seen better days,

  • so we recycled them onto this rocket, and this works wonderfully, but we're going to

  • keep it simple today. Now, in order to launch this, you gotta get a little bit of water

  • in there.

  • Put the plug with the valve in,

  • invert it, now there are two keys here, two clamps, that hold it in. And then, there is

  • a key that fits in to tightly hold this together, and we've got a pump here.

  • As we pump air in, it pressurizes. Now that air wants to get out, but there's a fair amount

  • of water in the way, so when we pull this pin out outdoors, it's going to push the water

  • out of the bottom of the rocket. Now, Newton says every action has an equal opposite reaction,

  • so the force pushed out of the bottom of the rocket is going to push the rest of the rocket

  • up and that's how every rocket works. Our model rocket uses chemical energy to do that.

  • This, we're just pressurizing. We're putting air in here which will push the water out

  • the bottom and push the rocket up. Let's head outside and launch this. We're ready to launch

  • the water rocket. Five, four, three, two, one! And that's how you launch a water rocket.

Hi, I'm Colin Kilbane and I'm going to show you how to make a very simple water rocket.

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