Hey guys, Grant here
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Hey guys, welcome back. I'm Nate. Thanks for joining me today on The King Of Random.
In our previous video, we showed you how to take zinc powder and sulphur and mix them together
into a fast reacting compound that could potentially be used as rocket fuel
Well today, we're gonna show you how to turn that potential into something highly kinetic
Rockets made from pens. Rockets are a lot of fun
but they can sometimes seem a little daunting or tricky to get into.
They have special engines, parachutes, launch pads and groups of engineers who build them.
Well the purpose of today's video is to show you how to easily build a
rocket at home that can be made for just a few bucks and in very little time
Here's the materials that we'll be using for this project today
The body of our rocket is going to be made from a ballpoint pen. Be sure to get the pens with the hexagonal
cross-section. The six sides will help you line up your fins. We'll need some cardboard
I got mine from a cereal box, a glue gun
High heat or low heat will work, some super glue, a straw used for stirring coffee,
some foam earplugs and of course some of the zinc and sulfur rocket fuel from our last video
We have all of our supplies now, let's get building
The first step is to remove the back of the pen.
On the pens I have the back doesn't want to come off easily
So I'm drilling a hole in the back of it and using a threaded screw to pull the back off
Once the back is removed, you want to pull off the top of the pen and remove the ink cartridge
Put a small amount of glue on the top of the pen and put it back in the pen body.
Now let's make our fins. Cut a strip of cardboard five eighths of an inch wide
Once you have the strip cut, slice off three one-inch lanes
From one corner, remove a piece at a 45-degree angle
Once you've got three of these you have your rocket fins
Cut a small piece of your straw about one-inch long
if you can't find any of these coffee stirring straws you can also roll up a piece of paper
about one inch wide and an inch and a half long. The ear plugs will be used as a safety measure
attached to the top of the rocket. This way when the rock comes down in case it lands somewhere
We weren't planning it's less likely to break or damaged anything.
To be sure that our foam ear plug stays nicely on the tip of the rocket
let's melt a small hole in the back of it. Holding a nail with a pair of pliers,
quickly heat it up in a flame.
While it's still hot, carefully use it to melt a small hole in the center of the back of the ear plug
We've now got all of our parts ready, let's assemble our rocket.
Apply a small strip of hot glue to one side of the pen
Secure the fin perpendicular to the body of the pen so that the end of the fin lines up with the end of the pen
On one of the sides between two of the fins, you'll want to attach your straw
If you're using a high heat glue gun, let the glue cool a little bit before attaching the straw or it could melt
Final step is to apply a little bit of super glue to the tip of the pen and use it to secure the earplug in place.
There you have it. You've now built a complete rocket
It's extremely simple and at this point the only thing left to do is test it out
We've got our completed rocket and our zinc sulfur fuel
Let's put some fuel in the rocket and see if we can get it to launch
Our rocket is now full of fuel
I'm gonna put it on the launch pad and fire it off using the N64 controller built in a previous video.
Don't worry, we'll explain how to make these igniters in our launch pad in our next video
Alright here goes nothing. Three, two, one
Oh! I see it. I saw it. I don't see it anymore, but I saw it for a second
It gonna come down over there somewhere if it hasn't already
Okay, that was really cool. It launched up really fast like that took off like a bullet
I think I was able to see it up in the sky for just a little bit
It's a nice sunny day, and they're like the reflective casing of the pen
I saw some glimmering up there. It looked like it turned a little bit in the sky
but not like. It didn't go crazy didn't launch off in weird directions just up
That was a good launch. Several hundred feet up there definitely
Three, two, one
Launching in three, two, one
That did not go straight at all. Hmm
Okay that thing just takes off like a rocket or make like a bullet
Maybe I don't know these. They launch up super fast into the air
You can barely see where they're going. You just see sort of a plume of green fire and white smoke
and then they're gone. And you can follow them a little bit
But I should warn you often these Rockets are sacrificial. They launch
and you can't really find them again unless they happen to go particularly straight up and straight back down
I'll do my best to strike the drone down out of the air
That exploded I think. I don't think it went anywhere. I think you just blew up...
Think that was a good launch. That looked like it went pretty straight up. It went fast cuz they always go fast
It didn't look like the pen exploded which might have happened a little bit so far. Nothing, not a big explosion
But we've had something that kind of broke off and went wonky, but that one was good. I liked that one
I want to see what that looks like from the drone
Made ourselves a little crater in the grass almost... dusty
There you have it, we've now had several successful launches with these little pen Rockets
These things are a blast. Pun intended. To quickly recap how we built this,
We took a cheap six sided ballpoint pen. Remove the back and the ink tube
Glued the top on. Added some small cardboard fins and a little guiding straw
Then we added a small foam ear plug to the tip just as a precautionary measure
so it doesn't cause any damage or injure anything if it comes down
where it's not supposed to. Using the zinc and sulfur mixture we talked about in our last video.
We filled the pen with the rocket fuel and launched it up. It worked pretty well
We did have a couple issues with rockets launching off sideways
I think most of those were caused by the guiding straw breaking off from the pen body
I might have let the glue cool too long in an effort to not melt the plastic
but I think that also made the connection weaker
Reinforcing the connection of the straw to the pen body seems to fix the problem. This has been a great project
and I'm excited to show you how we built our launch pad and electric igniter in tomorrow's video
Thanks for joining us for this video today, and we'll see you in the next one. Talk to you then.
Okay, here's the rocket that like turned a 90 degree angle and just launched
I thought it went way more over that way, alright.
The words of Adam Savage, failure is always an option
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