NASA Foam Rocket Investigation Part 2

The children worked in teams of 3, one member was a Launch Director, the Launcher and the Range Officer.

Investigation of how the tension of the elastic band affects the distance the foam rocket travels:

The Launcher attached the rocket to the launcher and pulled the string back so that the elastic band was a distance between 10cm and 50cm, the angle remained the same and was measured using a launch quadrant pattern and launched the rocket.

Investigation of how the angle affects the distance the foam rocket travels:

The Launcher attached the rocket to the launcher and pulled back the string until the tail reached the 60cm mark and using angles  between 10 and 80 degrees launched the rocket. 

The Launch Director recorded the angle and tension and the Range Officer measured the distance the rocket travelled. The teams changed jobs and completed the experiment again and afterward they compared their results.

Results:

After careful control of the launch angles and the stretching of the launch bands the results showed the farthest flights came from launches with an angle of 45 degrees. They also observed that launches of 30 and 60 degrees and launches of 20 and 70 degrees produced similar distances.

The farthest flights ,based on the investigation of tension, came from the rockets where the launch bands were stretched the furthest.

Conclusion:

The launches of the foam rockets were a good demonstration of Newton's third law of motion. 

For every force there is a reaction that is equal in size, but opposite in direction. That is to say that,  whenever an object pushes another object it gets pushed back in the opposite direction equally hard.