Who says tinkering is just for boys? If you’re throwing together empty softdrink bottles, handycraft tools, some spray paint, lots of tie-wraps, water, pressure, a big open field and a bunch of geeks… well then you better count me in.
This weekend I got my girl geek kick on at This Happened in Space. As a regular visitor of the This Happened Utrecht, a hosting party for speed talks about interaction design projects, I was invited to work together with 40 fellow tinkerers on perfecting the most fantastic blast off with water rockets.
The boys and girls from Rhinofly equipped us with basic materials, which we complemented with things we could find laying around at the grounds (I 'borrowed' the nozzle of the glue for aerodynamic purposes ;-)). We used anything from paper to plastic, from hand sewn parachutes to 3D printed Gardena-to-water bottle adapter. Experimenting with various shapes, heights and weights. My high school Physics teacher would have been so proud of me. And it earned me my very own rocketry badge.
The entire day was a true pressure cooker product development cycle, based on good old trial and error. In the end, big and simple seemed the most successful approach. Not very surprising. Even so it’s much more fun to experiment with the non-default solutions. And then of course you occasionally get wet. But with temperatures above 25 degrees, that’s only a bonus.
Check out some of the footage shot by various mobiles, a pro-cams, a pill cam and even by a drone. But of course, we’re geeks after all.
Want to do some bottle launching yourself? Check out the tutorial by our water rocket veteran Willem Jan Renger.
