Bottle Rocket Experiments take Center Stage in Library's Summer Program

Twenty young boys and girls gather around two waist-high wooden tables strewn with rolls of masking tape, crayola pens, and scissored bits of clear plastic.

“It’s called Newton’s Third Law of Motion,” says librarian Karen Anderson, reading from a loose sheet of paper. “To every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”

The children, upon the constructing and decorating of their rockets, amble over to a green trash can, above which a young assistant stands armed with a garden hose and a smile. Each child waits his or her turn at the filling station, then walks over to line up at the end of a long, orange rope connected to the launchpad – the trigger.

“Who’s up?” calls Anderson over the whirring hum of an air compressor. A boy walks forward and hands off his vessel to air traffic control. After securing the altered remains of what was once a 2-liter Dr. Pepper bottle in its place on the one square foot liftoff contraption, on loan from the Museum of the Rockies, the event sponsor, the librarian connects the compressor pump’s nozzle to the machine. The water inside the downturned bottle froths and bubbles.

“Wait until I say go,” says Anderson, still crouched over the fueling rocket. She pulls away the air tube, retreats five steps. “Ok – go!”

A sharp yank on the rope. A boy’s glinting grin. The low pitched fizz of the water, forced out of an inert state by air pressure’s disinterested hand. The rocket blasts skyward over trees, rooftops, powerlines. Newton’s third law, realized.

Tuesday had been Astronaut Day; many of the same children had been present, and had been schooled in the life ways of the space-bound – how to brush teeth in zero gravity, how to train your muscles for the exacting expulsion from Earth’s atmosphere. The promise of first-hand experience, a real-life launch, however microcosmic, brought them back. While rockets made from part of a Pizza Hut family value meal and prepped in the shadows of a Montana City-County Library are held prisoner by the limits of their own capacities, the constant principle of flight, whether fire-powered or water-dependent, applies its hand indiscriminately.

“Fill ‘em up, fill ‘em up,” calls Anderson. “About half full!”

A group of parents and siblings work to retrieve the bottles which crash land in trees and on the tin roof of a nearby garage upon reentry. Some takeoffs splutter and fail before the craft reaches ten feet, leaving the bystander wiping beads of hose water from his cheeks. But failure is no deterrent for the intrepid.

“Rrready for takeoff,” says a freckle-faced boy, rocket in hand, running to the line by the orange rope. So long as they keep moving, the buildup of acquired skill and knowledge expanding the boundless lea between their temples, who can rightly cap how high their journey will take them?

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s third law.