Finger Rocket
Nichele Seibel
We tried shooting one without fins and discovered that the fins really do help them fly farther! If you want a quick science experiment, try launching one before you glue the fins on and see what happens.
I have also made flinger toys using zip ties to hold in a washer to which the elastic is attached, and pipe insulation at Lowe's that was cut it into roughly 10 inch sections. With these "rockets" you stretch elastic from the back, hold the front, and let them fly. Left over pipe insulation can be used as "light sabers" or "nun-chucks."
I have a link party that I am trying to grow. I invite you to share this idea (and a couple of others) at my Grandma Ideas Sharing Time link up at I think my readers would LOVE this idea as much as I do.
We took a trip to the dollar store so we could make these ($3.00 total spent-$1 each for noodle, rubber bands, duct tape, we already had craft foam and E6000 glue).
We had all 4 made in just a short time, and then the fun started as we started launching them around. The fins were a must as the rockets only made it an unimpressive couple of feet without. I scored a notch in the noodle with a scissors and fitted the gluey fin in the groove.
We'll be taking these along when older siblings are playing outdoor sports as they are sure to entertain all the younger siblings (AKA sometimes unwilling tag-a-longs). If they get lost, damaged, or gifted they can easily be replaced.
A HUGE thank for sharing this post. I'm so excited I'm making these with a group of homeschool children tomorrow. I've been waiting to make these as I've been waiting on an order from china for the pool noodles, as it's nearly winter here (Australia) and impossible to buy them in the shop. Plus it was super cheap buying them from China. I've made my sample and it works REALLY well so I just know the kids will love them. With winter approaching it will be a good indoor game since they are made of foam.
Thank you for sharing this with us. Often times, I just throw these things away although I don't consider that a waste since I have exhausted what was previous useful -- in my eyes -- and that is what matters most.
Thanks for this! I have been using the pipe insulation style for a number of years, but these are MUCH better. I modified one thing: Cut two triangles out of a 6" square of thick craft foam (from Hobby Lobby). Slot one triangle halfway up from the bottom, and the other from the peak, then fit the two together. Cut four slots in the bottom of the pool noodle, and slide the "fin unit" up into the slots. Then hot glue the bottom of the pool noodle back together. This makes the fins almost impossible to come off.
I also use #64 rubber bands for the band that goes through the noodle. It's pretty stiff, but it is unlikely to break.
Oh my goodness!!! These are so fun! And they work so well and are very easy for even three year olds t fly. We had so much fun making them and flying them! Thanks for sharing such a fun thing!! One tip for anyone who has a high heat glue gun. Put the glue on the edge of the fin and let it cool just a bit before sticking it to the pool noodle so the noodle doesn't melt so much.
Thanks for this fun craft! We are going to do these at our 5-years-olf birthday party. My son and I just did a prototype.Since I don't have a hot-glue gun I used a knife to slit the noodle so that I could stick the fins into the noodle with some additional glue. Worked great as well.
I'm mom to four boys and one little girl. Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls is a place to find fun activities that kids will LOVE! We specialize in LEGO building ideas, STEM activities, and play ideas for active kids!
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I've received comments that explain to me that the analogy between rocket attitude control during a hovering maneuver and the act of balancing pencil on the end of a finger is a helpful and good one; solve one problem and you've solved the other, and I've just read elsewhere that it's definitely not, and thinking that way can be referred to as "the pendulum rocket fallacy".
Question: Is it possible to outline to what extent the analogy is helpful and in what ways it is inadequate or breaks down completely? If so, is it possible to do this by including some math, and not just paragraphs of prose? That may be most easily doable by quoting some source (a tutorial, some slides, a talk, a textbook, etc.) rather than trying to roll your own.
The pendulum fallacy is the belief that rockets would be passively stable with engines at the top, with the rocket "hanging" from them. The error lies in expecting gravity to pull the body of the rocket down while the engines pull it up. In reality, gravity acts on the body of the rocket and the engines equally, exerting no torque (except for negligible tidal forces), and the engines actually pull it forward, regardless of where that direction is with respect to gravity, or where the engines' notion of forward actually is with respect to the vehicle's center of mass. Any pointing error will cause the rocket to spin just as much with a "tractor" configuration as it does with a "pusher" configuration.
The inverted pendulum problem is control of an upside-down rigid pendulum by moving or applying torque to the base, with gravity exerting a toppling force. For example, balancing a broomstick or pencil on one's hand. Rockets are not really inverted pendulums, the disturbing torque from misaligned thrust is independent of the vehicle's orientation and gravity, but their response to such misaligned thrust or outside disturbances is similar and balancing an inverted pendulum is sometimes used as an analogy to rocket control. This analogy may not be accurate in every detail, but is not an instance of the pendulum fallacy.
If the engine is rigidly connected to the payload, then whether it is connected at the top or the bottom doesn't matter; in either case, it provides a constant torque, and as the payload rotates, the engine will rotate along with it. The angle between the engine-payload displacement and the force remains constant. The rocket will continue to rotate, but not in as catastrophic manner as in the pencil situation.
If the engine is attached non-rigidly to the payload, however, then an engine at the top will exhibit a phenomenon opposite to what we see in a bottom engine case. In both cases, the payload rotates with respect to the engine, but with a bottom engine, the payload rotates away from the direction of the force, causing a positive feedback loop and making the rocket unstable. With a top engine, the payload rotates towards the direction of the force, causing a negative feedback loop and making the rocket stable.
So the most stable configuration would be an engine with a payload connected with a rope, but obviously that has serious engineering challenges. The least stable configuration would be an engine with a payload connected with a hinge.
TL; DR
The payload is rigidly attached to the engine. When you hold a pencil with your finger, the pencil is not rigidly attached to your finger. If it were, it would be quite easy to keep it from falling.
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Harold Benjamin Finger (born February 18, 1924) is an American aeronautical nuclear engineer and the former head of the United States nuclear rocket program. He helped establish and lead the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, a liaison organization between NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission to coordinate efforts to create a nuclear thermal rocket.
Harold Benjamin Finger was born in Brooklyn, New York City,[1] on February 18, 1924,[2] the son of Beny Finger and his wife Anna ne Perlmutter. He was called Harry by his family, friends and colleagues.[3] His family moved to The Bronx when he was young. He attended Townsend Harris High School, from which he graduated in 1940. He then entered the City College of New York, from which he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1944.[1]
During World War II, he had a deferment until graduation, after which he expected to be drafted. He applied for a commission in the United States Navy and to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) He was accepted into the latter, and for NACA at its Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio.[1] He was nominally as a member of the United States Army Air Corps enlisted reserve, in May 1944.[1] His work initially involved testing German and Japanese aircraft engines, but he became involved in the development of the axial-flow compressor for jet engines.[3]
The Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory was renamed the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory after George W. Lewis on September 28, 1948.[4] Finger married Arlene Karsh on June 11, 1949; they had three daughters.[2] The following year, he was awarded a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering by the Case Institute of Technology.[3][5] He became the head of the Axial Flow Compression Group at Lewis in 1952, and then Associate Chief of the Compressor Research Branch in 1954.[2]
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