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mk · 4560 days ago · link · · parent · post: American kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests.
During the first Iraq war, a friend and I decided to build a model rocket SCUD missile. We filled the nose cone with gunpowder (scraped from the inside of model rocket engines), and had a launch fuse in the nose cone with its two wires sticking out. To ignite the warhead, we had a 9-volt battery in a chamber in the rocket that would slide forward on impact, and the contacts would touch the fuse.
Unfortunately, the 9-volt and the gunpowder really messed with the flight dynamics, and our SCUD went twirling out of control. We didn't make a SCUD2, but I bet by SCUD4 we would have had something. That microscope question is not only idiotic, it is almost soul-crushing. Microscopes are for looking at small things goddammit. That's why I use them. You learn how to use one properly when someone shows you, not out of a book. Garbage like that kills kids' interest in science.