  Model rockets have been employed in student projects, but very few papers in
aerospace education offer concise summaries of activities at university-course
levels. This paper aims to address this gap in the literature. The rockets used
by our students reached some 500 m (~1,640 feet) in altitude, deployed a
parachute, and spent 2-3 minutes descending to the ground. We present a series
of analyses and experiments that students performed in order to predict the
flight time, the maximum altitude, and the landing location of these rockets.
They wrote computer programs to numerically integrate equations of motion, and
experimentally measured input parameters (e.g., the thrust profile and drag
coefficients). Once launched, these rockets could not be controlled; targeting
the landing location would thus mean tilting the launch rail to a required
angle. The largest source of error in landing location came from the difficulty
in modeling wind velocities. Also discussed in this paper are the infrared
spectroscopy and the extraction experiment as novel additions to model rocket
projects.
