012/366: Rocket Dude!

SteelyKid spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing at a friend's house, so most of the photographic activity of the day involved The Pip energetically playing with various toys. This included a good while spent in the back yard with a Stomp Rocket:

The Pip attempts to send a Stomp Rocket into orbit. The Pip attempts to send a Stomp Rocket into orbit.

In this shot, he's leaped with great force onto the rubber bulb of the launcher, sending the rocket up over his head. Kate is playing the Mission Control role.

This is cropped from a wider shot, part of a series of rapid-shutter images of the launch, zoomed out to get the whole flight. I also have video of these, which might be interesting to look at with Tracker because the rocket is very much not in free fall-- the air resistance forces are very significant. That's a project for another day.

The culmination of this game was a "Great Challenge," that involved me launching the rocket, which The Pip then attempted to whack with a stick before it hit the ground. Why? Because he's a 3.8-year-old boy. Everything gets hit with a stick sooner or later.

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