At first, it looks like just another boring day in class. But this is not that.
"One of the things we do in my class is we build something called water rockets," says UW Associate Professor Erika Harnett.
High school students make their very own water rockets from a plastic, one-liter soda bottle, Play-Doh, cardboard, and duct tape.
"I tell 'em we're gonna go out in the courtyard and launch some water rockets, they think maybe they'll go up ten, 20 feet. And then when they see they go up 60, 70, sometimes 80 feet, they're much more excited. Very much wanna do it again. Try it over and over. Start experimenting."
Vashon Island senior Kelsey Morrison's never made a rocket before.
"Kinda opens my eyes that there are lots of different fields I could go into that I didn't really think about before I came," says Kelsey.
Water is the rocket fuel.
"And then you put it on a launcher and you use a bicycle pump to pressurize the air left in the bottle," Erika says.
The workshop is part of the Museum of Flight's annual "Women Fly" event, a two-day gathering of middle school and high school young women who get to interact with professional women in STEM careers.
