Paper Airplanes: Building, Testing, & Improving. Heads Up!
Students learn the different airplane parts, including wing, flap, aileron, fuselage, cockpit, propeller, spinner, engine, tail, rudder, elevator. Then they each build one of four different (provided) paper airplane (really, glider) designs with instructions, which they test in three trials, measuring flight distance and time. Then they design and build (fold, cut) a second paper airplane design of their own creation, which they also test for flight distance and time. They graph the collected class data. Analysis of these experiments with "model" airplanes and their results help them see and figure out what makes airplanes fly and what can be changed to influence the flying characteristics and performance of airplanes.
Basic paper airplanes.Copyright Emmet O'Neal Library http://eolchildrens.blogspot.com/
Engineers often create small-size models of a new product to test its design. This is especially true with airplanes. Model testing tells engineers how a design responds to different air conditions and aircraft shapes, and lets them experiment with the control surfaces that are used to steer the aircraft. Using small models guides engineers to discard prototypes that do not work, which is a smarter option than than throwing away full-size (large and expensive to build) aircraft that do not work.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Create a paper model of an airplane to use in experiments.
- Use their observations of paper airplane flight to explain flight.
- Find the average distance of flight trials.
- Explain how engineers often create small-size models of new products to test designs.