Monday, April 02, 2012

Paper Airplanes - Intro to Bernouli

“The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall.”
                                             -Wright Brothers -

As an introduction to Bernouli's Principle and the concepts of air pressure and currents,
I like to spend a day making paper airplanes with my students.
I found a terrific website by Ryan Farrington  
that has design plans for several variations of paper airplanes. 


provide my students with these plans. My students then must create and decorate four airplanes.  They must make at least two from the designs I provide for them.
(A great excercise in following directions) 
We then trek out to the football stadium and launch our planes trying to get them to land in the zeroes of the 40 and 50 yard line markers on the field.



 Students take notes on the effectiveness of their designs and methods of tossing their planes.
We then head back to the classroom to discuss the physics of flight and the Principles of Bernouli.
  


No comments: