Building a Bottle Rocket

Terri and I both enjoy watching This Old House on " PBS. A recent spin-off, Ask This Old House, is also a part of our Saturday morning routine. Last fall (2008), Ask This Old House did a segment on projects for kids. One of the projects was building a water rocket. As soon as we saw it, we knew that we had to build one for our annual trip to Santa Cruz, California. Our daughter Jen has friends that have two enthusiastic and inquisitive boys.

In May we visited Terri's cousin in England. Her cousin has a brood of grandchildren so we though it would be great to build a bottle rocket launcher. The British pipes are different sizes, but with Terri's cousin Pete's help, we built a launcher on a Saturday afternoon. The next day, we had a gathering of the whole group and we spent a couple of hours enjoying the bottle rockets at a nearby field.