Fwoosh went the rocket as it soared up into the air. The young engineers on the ground admired their work from below, satisfied at a job well done.

Cassie Fuller’s engineering class received their bottle rocket project Sept. 7 and had a week to research and design their rockets.

“I personally spent nine and a half hours building the two versions of my rocket,” junior Cailin Stewart said.

They made two bottle rockets and set them off at the same time Sept. 14.  The requirements were minimal for the project, the rockets had to leave the ground, anything else was decided by the students.

“We had to use two liter bottles, but Mrs. Fuller brought duct tape, an exacto knife, cardboard and hot glue guns,” freshman Geronimo Saucedo said.

The bottle rockets worked by having the bottle on a launch pad filled with 200 milliliters of water. The students would then force 60 pounds per square inch of air into the rocket, forcing it to fly upward.

The engineers lined up outside with the rockets they built. They sent the rockets up in the air two by two. The best rockets in the class flew up 150 to 175 feet in the air. By the end of the class, two teams did not manage to get their rockets off the ground.

“I felt pretty devastated,” Stewart said,” I had put in all of that time and to have it fail was awful.”