Balsa Glider Competition
Students act as if they are engineers designing gliders, aiming to improve the flight distance and time in the air. First, they determine the controls—the average distance traveled and time aloft for their basic model balsa wood gliders. Then they modify the wings, testing and reworking their altered designs to achieve improvements in distance and time. Using a design procedure whereby one variable is changed and all the others are kept constant, they determine how each modification affects the flight. They make measurements and analyze the class data. This activity brings together students' knowledge of engineering and airplanes, applying what they have previously learned about lift, weight, thrust and drag to glider models, as well as their understanding of the control surfaces—elevator, rudder and aileron—that control pitch, yaw, and roll, respectively.
Copyright ElectronicRU (open clip art) https://openclipart.org/detail/27127/glider-picture-by-electronicru
When working with models, engineers test, make changes, test again, make more changes, and so on until they have a successful design. It is important that engineers use the engineering design process in their testing, so they know what to change about the aircraft to fix any problems. Using this process, engineers make improvements and work out the "bugs" so they end up with well-designed aircraft. Also, by using small-size airplane models, the process is less expensive than testing on full-size airplanes.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe the steps of the engineering design process
- Compare a glider model with actual glider flight.
- Use variables to conduct an experiment.
- Use glider models to solve a problem and communicate their results.