Three Arizona State University freshmen at the Fulton School of Engineering and Barrett, the Honors College, took on the challenge of building a rocket that launches using just Alka-Seltzer tablets and water.
The Alka-Rocket Challenge is run by the company Bayer. The challenge is designed to inspire college students interested in engineering to take a middle-school science project to the next level with their science and math skills.
Joshua Pardhe, the leader of the project, found out about the challenge while searching for projects to do to complete an honors contract for his introduction to engineering 100 class. Kohei Nelson, a classmate of his, took on the project with him, along with Kohei's friend Jacob Abraham. Unfortunately, their rocket was not chosen as one of the finalists for the competition.
Music: Inspire - Royalty Free Background Music
Transcript:
Jacob Abraham: I'm Jacob, I'm a freshman at ASU studying computer science.
Kohei Nelson: Hi, I'm Kohei, also a freshmen studying computer science.
Joshua Pardhe: My name is Joshua. I'm a freshman studying computer systems engineering and business management, and we are the Sun Devil Alka-Rocketeers competing in the 2018 Bayer Alka-Rocket Challenge.
We were searching for a new project that would be interesting to do for an honors contract for our engineering class. The Bayer Alka-Rocket challenged popped up on a Google search and upon further investigation it seemed like a great project to dive deep inside the world of engineering. So I asked my classmate Kohei, and he asked his friend Jacob and we formed the team and built it.
Jacob Abraham: The goal of the competition is to create a rocket that basically launches the highest rocket fueled by Alka Seltzer tablets and water. We used 100 tablets of Alka Seltzer mixed with water in this cannon to launch a 3D-printed designed rocket.
Joshua Pardhe: We put all our brains behind it. We met twice a week, sometimes three times a week. We put together parts list and assembled it for testing. Our rocket reached a maximum altitude of 425 feet during testing.
Reach the reporter at ktpeloqu@asu.edu or follow @kiimberlytaylor on Twitter.
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