Cameron Dube, a junior in aeronautics and astronautics (left), and freshman Zach Bailey work on a rocket engine for the annual IAP activity. Each January, students design and construct rocket engines using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer and kerosene for fuel. At the end of the month, students spend a full day testing their designs in the blast chamber in the basement of Building 37, which was built to sustain an explosion of two pounds of TNT. The engine with the best burn and the lowest weight wins the contest. Those that blow up automatically receive a score of zero. "The tests can be pretty exciting," said Ph.D. candidate Carl Dietrich, who ran this year's contest. Photo / Donna Coveney
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 2, 2005 (download PDF).
