Great Rocket Activities Last Night!!

[LauraMO]

For this month's "Soaring to New Heights" theme, we had our Cubs rotate between 2 really fun stations at last night's den meeting.

 

At the first station, the Cubs launched film canister rockets fueled by Alka Seltzer tablets & a little bit of water. They loved the sudden POP! and seeing who's lid went highest & farthest. See

www.wtsmith.com/rt/projects.html for the instructions.

 

At the second station, each Cub filled a plastic 1-qt. soda bottle with a little water, stuck it onto a PVC launcher, & fueled the bottle with air pressure via a bike pump until WHOOSH! off the bottle soared a good 30' or so feet. It was great wet fun!! See www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus/abe/soda-bottle-rocket.pdf. We made the launcher for my son's "Family Make & Do Night" Bear requirement. Pretty easy.

 

The Cubs left the meeting excited & wanting to do more (yea!!). So, I sent them home with copies of the NEAR Shoemaker Satellite to cut out & assemble for Elective 1d credit. See www.spaceacademy.jhuapl.edu/shared_files/Activities/NEAR_byoss.pdf for this beautiful paper satellite.

 

Just had to share!

[NJCubScouter]

If your den is a bear den, next year in Webelos you can do actual model rocketry. I think that is one of the things in the Scientist activity badge (unless that has changed in the new Webelos book.) I think each boy participating has to be at least 10 years old... or maybe that was just a reference to the age requirements in most states... you can check when the time comes.