PROJECT ON

ALKA SELTZER ROCKET RACE

Submitted to: submitted by:

Mr. Rameshwar Prasad Nayak Pratik ghosh
Subject Teacher XII “PCB”
 CARE PUBLIC SCHOOL
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

Certificate
This is to certify that PRATIK GHOSH, a student of class
XII(PCB) has successfully completed the research on the below
mentioned project under the guidance of Mr. ___________
(subject teacher) during the year 2019-20 in partial fulfillment
of chemistry practical examination conducted by AISSCE, New
Delhi.

Signature of External Examiner:

Signature of Chemistry Teacher:

 Acknowledgment
I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep sense
of gratitude to all those people without whom the project could
never have been completed.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents for being
an inexhaustible source of inspiration and support.
I would like to especially thank my supportive chemistry Sir,
Mr. Rameshwar Prasad Nayak for showing his keen interest
in my project work and also giving his practical knowledge to
help me throughout.
The guidance and supervision of my honorable teachers,
parents and colleagues was very helpful in bringing this work
to the conclusion.

Pratik ghosh DATE:

XII “PCB”
 TOPIC

ALKA SELTZER
ROCKET RACE
 Material required
• Alka-seltzer tablets
• A friend!
• 2 Disposable plates
• Tape (packaging tapeworks best)
• A stop-watch (optional)
• Eye protection
• 2 Film canisters (Fuji film works well)
• 2 Cardboard tubes from bathroom tissue rolls
• Measuring tape (optional)
 Activity
• The first step is to build your rocket launchers
using the cardboard tubes and disposable plates.

• Center each cardboard tube on a plate and secure

it using the packing tape. If you like, you can
decorate your rocket launchers.

• The next step is to prepare the Alka-seltzer tablets

to be used as fuel in your rocket.

• Have your parent help you cut or snap the tablet

into four equal pieces; you will only need two of
these pieces for the activity.

• Measure equal amounts of water into each empty

film canister so that it is about ½ way filled. It’s
important to keep the amount of water equal in each
film canister so that your results are not affected.
• Between you and your friend, decide who will
crumble up their rocket fuel into smaller pieces and
who will use the piece of tablet as it is. DO NOT
ADD THE ALKA-SELTZER TABLETS TO THE
CANISTERS YET! That will be a later step.

• Clear your area for the rocket launch. This means

that you need to be wearing your eye protection, that
you are not shooting the rockets at or near any other
person, and that you have all your supplies ready:
your cardboard launcher, your Alka-seltzer fuel, your
film canister ½ filled with water, and the cap to the
canister.

• Now you are ready to launch your rockets! Try to

guess which rocket will launch faster: the person
with one big piece of fuel, or the person with the
same amount of fuel, but crumpled into smaller
pieces?
• The last few steps are the most complicated
because they must be done very quickly; read
through the rest of the instructions BEFORE you
start this step. You and your friend need to put your
Alka-seltzer tablets into the film canisters at the
same time.

• Quickly cap the film canisters and insert them into

the launchers cap-side down.

• Aim the two launchers away from yourselves

and away from anyone else and wait for your
rockets to launch! Be patient! This step takes
up to 1 minute.

• DO NOT LOOK DOWN THE LAUNCHER TO

CHECK ON YOUR ROCKET!!! If after several
minutes your rocket doesn’t detonate, tilt the
launcher away from your face and slide the film
canister out onto the floor. Hold the canister in
your hands with the cap facing away from your
face and pop it off with your thumbs. Then, try
the activity again using 1/3 of an Alka-seltzer
tablet.
 What’s going on

When the Alka-seltzer is added to the water,

the tablet dissolves into the water and in the
process produces a gas called carbon dioxide.
When you cap the film canister with the Alka-
seltzer and water inside, the gas that is
produced becomes trapped. As more and more
gas is produced and is trapped, pressure within
the film canister begins to build. Eventually, the
pressure is so great that the Alka-seltzer, the
fuel in this rocket had a greater surface-area-to-
volume ratio. Since the gas-producing reaction
can only occur on the force of the gas pops
open the film canister. There is so much force
that when the cap pops off, the film canister is
shot up into the air! The rocket that used the
crumpled Alka-seltzer as fuel should have
launched first. Although both rockets used the
same amount of water and surface of the tablet,
this increased ratio means that more gas was
produced more quickly and so the pressure
increased faster than in the large piece of
rocket
Why does the rocket
goes up?
It goes up because gas is building and building
in the closed film canister and since the lid is
the weakest point of the canister, the lid pops
off and all that gas comes rushing out of the
end of the canister. This action can be
explained using Newton’s Laws of Motion, more
specifically it is an example of Newton’s Third
Law of Motion – “Every action has an equal and
opposite reaction”. The gas rushing out of one
end of the canister (the action) causes your
rocket to move in the opposite direction (the
reaction). This is exactly how all rockets work
whether you use an effervescing tablet as your
fuel or a chemical rocket propellant like they do
at NASA.
ALKA SELTZER TABLETS
How do the NASA
rockets work?

Quite simply, rockets are how NASA can get all

those amazing missions off the ground. These
rockets use a pressurized fuel and an oxidizer.
The oxidizer is something that allows the fuel to
burn without using outside air. (Can you think of
a reason why this might be important? Write
your answer in the comment box below!) The
fuel, in a gaseous state, is pressurized because
this forces it out the end of the rocket just like
our Film Canister Rocket! However, there are a
few more parts to an actual rocket.
The fuel used in the rockets like the ones that
help the space shuttles enter space use liquid
hydrogen as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the
oxidizer. You may be saying to yourself, “I
thought they just said that the fuel is in the
gaseous state not liquid?”. You are right, the
fuel and oxidizer are only in these liquid states
when they are in the holding tanks and they can
only stay in this liquid state at extremely low
temperatures. The fuel and oxidizer are allowed
to combine within the combustion chamber and
as the burn they turn into a gas (gases take up
about 1,000 times more space than a liquid)
this causes the intense pressure. It is exactly
like our Film Canister Rocket, the carbon
dioxide builds up and puts intense pressure on
the canister so the lid pops off. In the case of
our shuttle rocket the fuel and oxidizer burn, are
put under intense pressure and are released
not by the popping off of a lid but through a tiny
hole on the bottom of the combustion chamber
called a nozzle.
 Vocabulary
Surface area: The total area of the surface of a
three-dimensional object
Volume: The amount of 3-dimensional space an
object occupies or its capacity.
Surface-area-to-volume ratio: The relative size
of these two values
Pressure: force applied over a surface.
 Conclusion
In this activity, you explored how changing the
particle size of a reactant affected how it
behaved in a reaction. Although you used the
same amount of Alka-seltzer, by changing its
physical form you affected its rate of reaction
with water. This caused pressure within the film
canister to build more quickly and the rocket to
launch faster. In products like the antibacterial
silver food storage containers that you saw at
the museum, changing the particle size of the
imbedded silver affects its ability to react.
Nanosilver particles are so tiny that their
surface area to volume ratio is very high,
making them extremely effective at preventing
bacteria growth. The importance of a high
surface-area-tovolume ratio is not just important
for nano-silver; it is a fundamental principal of
nanoscience and biological cells.
 BIBIOGRAPHY
➢ https://www.seminarsonly.com/Engineering-Projects/Chemistry/alka-
seltzer- rocket-race.php

➢ https://www.imaginationstationtoledo.org/educator/activities/rocke
ts

➢ GOOGLE IMAGES

➢ GOOGLE CHROME
THANK
YOU