Make your own rocket!

Have you ever wanted to fly into outer space in a rocket ship? What's the science that would make that work? Here's a small experiment that you can do in order to simulate the forces that would be needed in order to liftoff!

As you can see, the rocket moves without any energy from itself. The pulling back of the rubber band creates a storage of potential energy behind the straw rocket. Once you release the rubber band, all the potential energy immediately changes into kinetic energy to move the rocket up, up, and away! The rubber band uses up all the kinetic energy in order to return to its un-stretched shape.

Newton's laws of physics are also involved in the launching of a rocket. Newton's third law says that any action has an opposite and equal reaction. Thus, the force that you used to pull the rubber band back will be copied in the opposite direction when the rubber band jumps back to its original position. Since energy and force can't just disappear into the air, all the energy goes into the straw rocket.

The real rockets that NASA uses also follow these same basic principles. However, since their rockets are tons heavier than our straw one, they need a giant chemical reaction to create enough force for the rocket to be propelled up.