Launching experiments

Although Costa Mesa student Grayson Erskine didn’t end up with a perfect projectile, he still had fun and learned a lot.

At the annual bottle-rocket launch at the Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, put on by the Discovery Science Center, Grayson used tape to add several fins to the sides of his bottle.

“I was just experimenting, but it didn’t fly straight,” said Grayson, 11.

He and his family joined nearly 1,000 would-be rocket scientists Saturday at Boeing, where they dispatched hundreds of two-liter creations into the sky.

“We were launching all day long,” said Keith Brush, the director of the center’s Future Scientists and Engineers of America program, which puts on the event and has chapters at many area schools.

Each participant brought their own 2-liter soda bottle, and used provided materials like a paper cone and a parachute to build a rocket.

The bottles were launched using pressurized air and water, and volunteers measured how long each “rocket” stayed in the air.

This was Grayson’s family’s first trip to the event.

Grayson, who attends Davis Elementary in Costa Mesa, was joined in his efforts at the launch by his sister Emma, 7, who goes to Paularino Elementary.

“It was a lot of fun,” said their father, Guy Erskine, the lead math and science coach for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

“This is the best kind of science experience, because you’re given the materials and have to figure it out by yourself,” he said.

He and his family learned tricks of the trade from the day’s elementary school-aged winner, Matthew Lowe, and his father.

The two added a piece of clay to weight their paper cone, Erskine said.

Matthew, who attends Bolsa Christian School in Westminster, had the longest hang time of the day, with his rocket catching 56:03 seconds in the air.

He was given the opportunity to attend a real rocket launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Coming in second was Jesse Torres, whose rocket lasted 46:28 seconds in the air.

Janet Yamaguchi, vice president of education at the Santa Ana-based science center, said 923 people showed up for this year’s second annual free event.

Yamaguchi added that 19% of attendees were in seventh through 12th grades, a much higher number than last year.

“It’s to make them say, ‘I can be an engineer and work at Boeing,’” she said.

The organization also hosts a popular pumpkin launch in the fall, in which pumpkins are launched from a trebuchet.