This activity involves re-using an empty plastic drinks bottle and some craft resources to build a stomp rocket !

Everybody loves rockets, and, using and empty drinks bottle and some other bits and pieces, we can build a rocket that really flies !

Specifically, the rocket is powered by the release of the air within the bottle being moved out of the bottle at high speed.  The fast moving air air rushes out of the bottle and into the body of the rocket.  The body of the rocket, though, can't contain all that air, so the rocket is forced to move out of the way ... and the way it goes is up, up and away !

This is a fun task to do with children, and, once they have built their rockets, they can hold a competition to find out which rocket flied further or flies higher.

There are loads of different thing you can do to your rocket to try to make it fly better, but the engineering and technical challenge is to keep the weight of the rocket as low as possible, keep it 'aerodynamic' (streamlined) and avoid it becoming 'top heavy'.