One Waterloo, Ill., team's
unique rocket design didn't work

An all-girl team of eighth graders from Waterloo, Ill., was confident its rocket with a unique nozzle design was a winner. But, their water-powered rocket didn't live up to their expectations.

Heather Wiegand, Tori Vogt, Teryn Schaefer and Amber Rucker made up Team NXB036. Their's was one of 50 teams taking part in the Eggs-Prize competition at Waterloo Junior High.

The goal was to build a rocket that could survive two consecutive launches, rise 30 meters into the air each time and land twice without breaking a raw egg stored in the nose cone.

The Eggs-Prize lessons for kids were provided by X-Prize of St. Louis. That's the organization which is offering a $1 million prize for anyone who builds a reusable machine that can take passengers on two consecutive trips into outer space.

(To learn more about the X-Prize, visit their website at www.xprize.com or .org.)

After two days of final firings, seven teams met the launch standards. Two teams were tied for first, with two successful launches and landings, and maximum height of 44 meters.

The two teams tied for first after two days were Team NXB053 (Cody Gallagher, T.J. Ervin, Andrew Biffar and Kayla Koller) and Team NXB087 (Kaitlyn Stephan, Sara Yarbrough and Wesley Braswell).

Before the firing started, 13-year-old Heather Wiegand said, "Our narrower exhaust hole will make the rocket go higher." That was the theory at least.

After their launch, the girls admitted they hadn't cut the smaller exhaust hole correctly.

The girls said, "We think it would have worked if the nozzle hole had been bigger and exactly round. Our hole was uneven so when the rocket shot off it swerved and didn't go straight up." The rocket only got only 2.61 meters off the ground.

But, the girls added, "The egg survived the landing."

All teams made their rockets out of upside-down 2-liter plastic bottles. The rockets got lift when air pressure forced water "fuel" through the spout where the soda comes out.

All other rockets in the competition left the bottle opening the way it was made. But Team NXB036 glued half of a ping-pong ball over the regular opening. They had cut a smaller hole in the ball.

The girls divided up design and building jobs when making the rocket.

Fourteen-year-old Tori Vogt said she worked on "the payload so the egg will survive." The kids used a combination of cotton balls, packing peanuts and bubble wrap to cushion the egg.

Thirteen-year-old Teryn Schaefer worked on design of the fins that were to stabilize the rocket flight. The rocket had fins that were thin and stuck out further than fins on some other rockets.

She said, "This is the first year anyone has ever done a design with a smaller exhaust hole." She added, "We learned that the smaller the hole the bigger the thrust."

Quinn Rodenberg and Andrew Robert

Andrew Robert and Quinn Rodenberg were on another of the rocket teams in science teacher Debbie Clinebell's classes. The two 13-year-olds left the exhaust hole as is.

But, they put a lot of effort into the payload container for the egg and the stabilizing fins.

Quinn said, "We used a pointed payload container so the nose cone will crumple and cushion the landing."

Andrew said their rocket had stabilizing fins both at the end of the rocket and in the middle. "The two in the middle will act like wings during flight," he said.

He said the rocket experiments helps him to learn about space. He thinks he might like to be a space scientist when he grows up.

Thirteen-year-old Mike Hopper's rocket featured a smaller nose cone than many. "In our expert groups, we learned a smaller, lighter nose cone works better," he said. His rocket also featured only three stabilizing fins.

He said the team tried a rocket with no fins and a big nose cone. "The rocket tumbled and hit on the side where the egg was. It shattered in a million pieces," he said.

One thing missing from this year's rockets were parachutes. In previous years, kids tried to cushion the landing with parachutes but most of them didn't deploy. This year, they put more faith in extra padding in the nose cones.

Mike Hopper