Sourced by Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, students and educators will engage in building a helicopter and making it fly. Adaptations of extra weight or shortening blades will alter flight abilities making for an exciting...

This lesson focuses on helicopters and drones, how they fly, how they are used in different ways that help people and the environment. Teams of students explore helicopter flight; and design, build, and test their own simple rotor out of...

Students study the aerodynamic properties of a maple seed and then apply what they observe making their own flying object.

Learners begin to explore the idea of a force. To further their understanding of drag, gravity and weight, they conduct activities that model the behavior of parachutes and helicopters. An associated literacy activity engages the class...

Print and cut out the template for the helicopter. Then experiment with adding and subtracting weight, or changing the shape of the copter or the blades to see what makes it fly best.

The Illinois Institute of Technology lets students investigate the aerodynamics of a helicopter, focusing on the variables which effect the lift, thrust, drag, and weight. Students investigate the effects of aerodynamics on a wide board.

This helicopter history page provides the fascinating story of Commander Frank Erickson and the world's first helicopter school.

This site from the Illinois Institute of Technology provides a student lab activity in which the flight of a paper airplane is investigated and studied. Designed for primary grades, but easily adaptable for junior high students.

This teacher's guide from Public Television's Newton's Apple discusses and illustrates the physics principles governing the flight of a frisbee. Includes teacher lesson plans, activity ideas, discussion questions, and information about...

Dora Jean Dougherty Strother (b. 1921) (center) was a human factors engineer and test pilot for Bell Helicopter Co. in 1961 when this photograph was taken, and had just broken a helicopter altitude record (at 19,406 feet) in a Bell...