NASA would be proud of the science and engineering team of Lucy Haffner, Taylor Hurt and Isabella "Isa" Vidal.
The three fifth-graders said they did research on a National Aeronautics and Space Administration website before they launched a homemade bottle rocket named "Rocket No. 2" that soared more than 100 feet into the air above the athletic field at Timonium Elementary School on Monday.
"That was sweet," said fifth-grade science and math teacher Jeff Verkest, who fired the rocket from the ground as his colleague Melissa Gagnon and dozens of students from four classes counted backward, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ..."
"Holy cow!" said Gagnon as the contraption finally fell to earth. "That was like 10 times higher than anything we've done before."
"I think that's pretty awesome," said Lucy, who teamed with Isa and Taylor to fashion the rocket by attaching cardboard "wings," also known as "fins," and a plastic cone to a 2-liter bottle filled with water.
Isa said the NASA site was a big help.
"It said to put weight on the nose cone and make the wings bigger," she said. "So we did both."
Gagnon said the project was part of a new curriculum supplement called "May the Forces Be With You," written by Tim Kent, a Baltimore County resource teacher. The supplement is being used in seven county public schools. Gagnon and Verkest, science and math teachers at Timonium Elementary, were trained to run the program at Timonium Elementary.
The school's four fifth-grade classes, working in teams of three or four students each, first made rudimentary rockets with nose cones and fins, but without any training or research beforehand. The results were mixed during a trial launching of 28 rockets, one per team, on March 12, although student Mikayla Shefts said, "I thought it went really well."
Lily Bingham said her team's rocket was destroyed in that test flight.
"It went like 93 feet, I think," she said. "We don't know exactly. When it fell on the ground, it fell apart. It only had one of four fins at the end."
"Ours went the highest," about 115 feet in altitude, said Will Sharpe, who was in another team. The trick, he said, was to make each fin the same size.
"We had our wings straight," he said.
Since then, the fifth-graders have done research and class assignments, redesigning the rockets and figuring out how to make them flight-worthy, including deciding how many fins to put on them.
One class had a lively debate about whether the rockets should have two wings or four, Gagnon said. She said four won.
Students also learned to outfit the rockets with strategically placed weights made of everything from whiffle balls to clay.
"In my group, we used both, to add a little extra weight and balance it out," Lily said.
On Monday, they tried another launch, this time with more research under their belts.
"Now, we've learned a little bit more, so we modified them to make them better," Mikayla said.
"We've been teaching the engineering process — you test, you rebuild, you try it again," said Verkest.
In an effort to combine the science and engineering components of the project with math and reading skills, teachers asked the students to measure angles, distance and time. They used clinometers to measure elevation in degrees. And they doubled as newspaper reporters, gathering information so they can write articles next week about the project and what they learned.
Fifth-grade teacher Molly Wilson said students were instructed to interview "experts," and to ask questions such as, "How did your rocket launch?" and "Why did you design your nose cone longer?"
One boy was overheard asking another, "Do you think your rocket will explode?"
But who exactly were the experts?
"They interviewed each other," Wilson said. "However, I told them they could interview the teachers, so I guess the teachers in this case would be the experts."
Each bottle rocket, some with basic decorations like red streamers, was placed on a small launcher, hooked to an air compressor and filled with 80 PSI (pounds per inch) of air. A long extension cord ran from the field to the school building. Students watched from the steps leading down from the school to the field, and from a nearby grandstand, so as not be injured.
When fired, the pressured water shot out of the bottom of the rocket, which shot up in the air, proving physicist Isaac Newtown's Third Law of Motion, that for every action there is a reaction, Gagnon said.
The point of the exercise, Gagnon said, is to teach children about forces that are acting on the rockets, like gravity and drag.
"It's all physics," she said.
And she said the girls tended to make their rockets more meticulously, while the boys tended to throw theirs together.
Watching from the steps, Luke Pezzulla was properly impressed as Rocket No. 2 touched the sky.
"That was like 150 feet," he said.