How To Make Sugar Rockets (Powder Fuel)

hey everybody i'm ethan allred and in today's video i am going to be showing you how to make sugar rockets [Music] i'm also going to be showing you how they work and why we build them this way so stick around you don't want to miss this [Music] so what is a sugar rocket well a sugar rocket is a homemade model rocket motor using sugar and an oxidizer so yes sugar is used as rocket fuel so why build a sugar rocket well i'll give you two good reasons the first one being money hobby rocketry motors can range from a couple dollars all the way up to about 25 dollars per launch this single d12 motor costs about seven bucks so yeah that can get expensive a far more powerful sugar rocket can be made for under a dollar reason number two for building sugar rockets is it's extremely fun and rewarding to be able to create something from scratch that launches 2 000 feet in the air that's pretty satisfying and this is how you do it to begin this project you are going to want a three-quarter inch pvc pipe measuring exactly five inches in length to create the mixture of rocket fuel we are going to be using spectracide stump remover we are going to be measuring out three ounces of this this particular stump remover is almost 100 potassium nitrate which just so happens to be a perfect oxidizer for sugar rockets the potassium nitrate right out of the bottle is kind of clumpy it's almost like a fine salt but we need it to be a powder so we're going to put it in the blender and blend it up next we will need powdered sugar we will be measuring out one ounce of powdered sugar next mix the potassium nitrate and powdered sugar together using a container shake it vigorously for about 20 seconds to make sure that it's mixed well the more thoroughly mixed the more effective the rocket fuel will be fun fact potassium nitrate contains nearly 50 oxygen molecules by mass that is a ton of oxygen which is why it is one of the most popular ingredients for pyrotechnics and other types of explosives in just a refresher fuel needs oxygen to burn sugar being the fuel in potassium nitrate supplying the oxygen for the fuel this creates a rapid burn which creates the lift-off of the sugar rocket the next thing you'll need is some bentonite clay which you can find in a cheap bag of kitty [Music] litter the bentonite clay and kitty litter is in large grains and we will need to turn it into powder using the blender as well [Music] the next thing you'll need is a three quarter inch diameter ram rod which we'll also use as a template to compress the powders into the pvc casing the markings should be like so an inch and a quarter four and a quarter inches and five inches now some people like to use wooden dowels for this i prefer to use a three-quarter inch bolt with the thread side cut off leaving you with just a nice round shaft the reason i chose to use the bolt over the dowel is because when you compress with the dowel it ends up splitting and it just doesn't hold up as well as the bolt also the bolt gives a lot more weight and compression onto your powders so with powders being more compressed i feel like you get a little bit better engine now using a funnel we will pour a little bit of bentonite clay down into the pvc pipe using our template and a mallet we will compress the clay and continue to add clay until we reach our four and a quarter inch mark [Music] next we will add our rocket fuel begin adding and compressing your rocket fuel until you reach the one and a quarter inch mark [Music] once compressed add another three quarters of an inch of bentonite clay the clay is acting as a plug on both sides of the rocket fuel so the more highly compressed the clay the better the plug [Music] next using a seven thirty seconds drill bit we are going to drill a hole three and three quarters to four inches deep directly through the center of the bottom of the rocket engine it's the safest to use your hand to do this but i like to use a drill on low setting and without creating too much friction if you're going to use a power drill you want to drill really slowly and create as little friction as possible otherwise it is possible for you to create enough friction to ignite the rocket fuel [Music] and that's it your very own sugar rocket motor so you might be wondering how powerful is this rocket engine using these dimensions and measurements this rocket engine is designed to be the equivalent of an f-class motor this is about as big as you can go without needing a high-powered rockets permit or license that being said even though these are legal to make they are illegal to transport so i guess that you are supposed to build them where you're launching them and not at home and then go driving off into the boonies to shoot them off so so you might be wondering why we drill a hole all the way through the rocket engine and not just through the nozzle and then light it from there the reason we hollow out the rocket fuel is because it gives way more surface area than just the flat bottom the more surface area you have burning at a time the more thrust that motor will produce if you only have three quarters of an inch diameter you only have .44 inches burning really slow all the way through your rocket so it'll last long but not give very much thrust not to mention you probably burn out through the side of the pvc pipe within just a few seconds by hollowing a core out through the engine just to begin you are creating 1.96 inches of surface area which is four times as much as if you were just flat you're now burning from the inside out as it takes off it creates a lot more thrust because it's surface area is getting a lot bigger really fast and by the time it goes from 7 30 seconds diameter to three quarters it is now going from under two inches to over seven inches of surface area that is almost 17 times more surface area burning at a time than if you're just burning from a flat surface going upward so yeah if it wasn't hollowed out it would just burn too slow to create enough thrust to to launch and it would just it would just burn up the pvc pipe really fast so that's why i would do it this way all right so i hope you learned something about sugar rocket motors let's go outside and launch these [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you for watching this video i hope you learned something new if you like videos of interesting and curious projects like this one please hit the subscribe button like and share and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Ethan Allred

Views: 1,000,075

Keywords: sugar rockets, sugar rocket, rocket candy, sugar rocket build, diy sugar rocket, diy rocket, how to make a sugar rocket, making a sugar rocket, best sugar rocket, how a sugar rocket works, building a sugar rocket, making sugar rockets, how to make a model rocket motor, homemade rocket engine, homemade rocket motor, how to make rocket fuel, how to make sugar rockets, how to make a rocket engine, how to make sugar rocket, how to make a powerful rocket engine, kno3, shuger, shugar

Id: c-rsH4FObZQ

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020