Since the Internet has become a regular part of many Canadian's lives, however, communicating has become easier than ever. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can easily reach anyone else connected to the Internet, in Canada or somewhere else in the world. And there are initiatives today such as Industry Canada's SchoolNet project that aim to make the Internet accessible to all Canadian students.

Anyone using the Internet can see the power of the technology that binds people together and the strength of the community that has been created. The Great Cross-Canada Water Rocket Challenge is designed to introduce not only the scientific concepts of pneumatic pressure and aerodynamics, and not only the technology of the Internet and CU-SeeMe video conferencing, but also the national community available to everyone over the Internet.

• One 2 L pop bottle for each participant
• 8.5" x 11" paper
• Cardstock or bristol board
• One cork
• One bicycle pump
• One basketball inflation needle
• One CU-SeeMe camera
• One computer
• One Internet connection
• Excited participants (locally)
• Excited participants (nationally)

• Eggs
• Assorted egg cushioning materials (cotton, toilet paper, straws etc...)

Then fill your rocket between .25 and .5 full of water. (This is a nice place for a side experiment to see what water level works the best).

Push the inflation needle through the cork (you may need to trim the length of the cork) and attach the needle/cork apparatus to the hose of the bike pump. Improvise a stand (a couple of rocks to prop up the rocket can work... or you can build something fancier), push the cork into the bottom of the rocket, and start pumping.

Eventually enough pressure will build up in the bottle to pop the cork and away the rocket goes. This is a nice demonstration of pneumatic pressure and Newton's third law (that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction).

To make it all part of The Great Cross-Canada Water Rocket Challenge, arrange to run this project on the same day and time as another group in another part of Canada (watch out for different time zones). Try contacting another summer camp, a school, or a community centre. Once your rockets are working, you can record a couple of launches onto your computer with the CU-SeeMe camera. When you get back inside onto your Internet connection, meet up with the other participants and share your launch videos.

An even cooler thing would be to try to string your Internet connection outside so that other participants could watch in real-time as rockets are launched.

And yet another offshoot would be to design the rocket nosecones to carry an egg aloft and back down to earth without breaking the egg. Participants could then share their successes and near successes with each other.