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Scroll down to find out how you can make you own rocket at home

  • an empty plastic bottle

  • stiff paper or cardboard

  • sticky tape or duct tape

  • paint, stickers or permanent markers

  • a cork

  • a needle adaptor

  • a bike pump

  • water

Things you will need

  • Push the needle adaptor of the pump through the cork. The needle needs to go all the way through to let air into the bottle so you may need to trim the cork to be a bit shorter

  • Push the cork with the needle in it into the mouth of the bottle. It needs to be a tight fit so the cork doesn’t fall into the bottle and so air can build up inside the bottle without escaping around the sides of the cork.

  • This is a good time to decorate your rocket, why not give it a cool paint job or add some stickers?

Instructions

  • Building a cone for the “head” of your rocket will help it to fly straight and make it look cool

  • Cut a circle out of stiff paper or cardboard - an easy way is to turn a cereal bowl upside down and trace around it first. Then you can cut along the line.

  • Put a dot in the middle and cut a triangle out of the circle like in this picture.

  • Without creasing the cardboard, carefully roll the circle into a cone shape and secure with sticky tape.

  • You can change the shape of your cone by cutting a bigger or smaller triangle or overlapping the edges more when you stick your cone together.

Building the cone

If you have some blue tack at home, you can put a small piece inside the tip of your cone, this will help to balance the rocket by moving its centre of gravity towards the “head” of your rocket.

  • Fins will help to stabilise your rocket when it is in the air.

  • Cut out some cardboard triangles and attach to your rocket with some duct tape.

Building the fins

Launching your rocket

  • Fill the bottle one-quarter full of water and push the cork in tightly.

  • Take the bottle outside and connect the pump to the needle adaptor. Ours wouldn’t stand up on the fins so we rested it on a box, but if you make some strong fins it should stand up by itself.

  • Pump air into the bottle, making sure all spectators stand back, the bottle will lift off with force once the pressure inside builds up enough.