Explain the concept of aerodynamics to your kids with this simple experiment 

What do you do with all those empty plastic bottles at home? Do you throw them out or, better yet recycle them? Well, making best out of waste through a do-it-yourself STEM activity is a good idea to use plastic bottles lying around. Easily made with a few materials that can be sourced quickly, the Bottle Rocket experiment is an easy and enjoyable way to get your children started with rocketry.  

In other words, this is the activity for your young learners if you want them to learn how rockets fly. It will also introduce your kids to the concepts of aerodynamics, air resistance and Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Sir Issac Newton was a prominent English scientist famed for discovering the theory of gravity. Moreover, he’s also credited with having developed three laws of motion to describe how objects move. Let us help you help your kids understand more about this through the experiment given below. Read on. 

The experiment 

Introduce your kids to the fascinating world of physics with a simple home experiment.  

What you’ll need   

• An empty plastic bottle 

• 4 fins and a cone made of cardboard 
• Cork 
• Pump with a needle adaptor 
• Water 

How-to   
Get these on a table, call your child, and start the experiment. Here’s a step-by-step guide. Help him follow these.  

• Push the pump's needle adaptor through the cork. It must go all the way through, so the cork may need to be trimmed a little. 
• Now, decorate the bottle with the cone and the fins. 
• Fill the bottle one quarter full with water and firmly insert the cork. 
• Take the bottle outside and connect the pump to the needle adaptor. 

• Fill the bottle with air and stand back while doing so; the bottle will lift up with force after a few seconds. 
• Even if nothing appears to be occurring, do not approach the rocket once you have started pumping. It could prove dangerous for you and your kids. 

How did the water bottle rocket launch? 
As per physicist Issac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, pressure builds up inside the bottle as you pump air into it. If you keep pumping, the force of the air blowing on the water will eventually pull the cork out of the bottle. This will allow the water to flow out in one direction, while the bottle pushes back in the other. The rocket is pushed upwards as a result of this. Now, you may correlate how space rockets function in a similar manner. Instead of squirting water, space rockets burn fuel to create a forceful jet of hot gas. The rocket is propelled higher by the downward force of the gas. This is a fantastic example of Newton's Third Law of Motion.