I'm making a stomp rocket out of an air mattress for my museum. I don't think it's going to work super well because of how gas works. But it will look interesting I hope. Testing in like 5 minutes for the first time. If it works, I will make a post bout it
Museum work is full of weird things :D keeps my ADHD happy.
Good news!
It works! Bad news... I forgot to take pics.
But basically, take a twin size air mattress, cheapo from Amazon, then blow it up. You might think that jumping on the mattress would just pop it, and yes, it probably would! Especially if you try to push all that air out a tiny hole like the included inflatable nozzle.
Why use tiny hole when you can have big hole!
I bought some 2inch PVC pipes from the hardware store. Specifically, I bought an end cap, and an end to end joint. This would become my new hole for air to come out! The best part, it's also now a standard size, so I can plug more pipes together to make the launcher.
I cut a hole in the size of the mattress, leaving some flaps of mattress material on there so the tape had something to bind to, and then sealed it on there by cramming the pipes together. It works... Well enough. It doesn't have to be airtight, as it's only holding pressure for about a minute.
We are going to use a sheet of wood on top to help distribute the weight of the jumpers, but we don't have that yet, so I just used an upsidedown folding table. Lol
The giant launcher is probably going to be used on saturday, and assuming its still in one piece, i will document how i built it, so i have better pictures to explain the process!
