Part 1
Stages of a Flying Rocket
Stage 1 Air pressure launches your bottle rocket.
Stage 2 Thrust pushes the rocket upwards
Stage 3 The rocket coasts to the top of its flight.
Stage 4 The rocket plummets to earth after reaching its apex.
All the motion of a rocket results from thrust. Thrust is defined as any force tending to make an object move. In a rocket engine, thrust is the force that pushes the engine forward or up. What produces the thrust for our rocket?
To understand how thrust operates we can look at the work of the famous scientist Isaac Newton. One of his discoveries was the Laws of Motion. His third law of motion explains many numbers of things. One is how rockets work. His third law of motion states: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.