Discovery Education
Discovery Education: Inventors and Inventions 2: Air and Space
After discussing important flying inventions, students explore technological design by making paper airplanes.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Building a Paper Airplane Using Bernoulli's Principle
This is a culmination activity used after middle schoolers have studied Bernoulli's Principle as part of a unit on forces and fluids. Students will use the Internet, textbooks, library resources and their cooperative learning group to...
Smithsonian Institution
National Air and Space Museum: Wright Brothers: Engineering the Wright Way
Great interactive provides students with an opportunity to use engineering skills to design and test airplane wings based on the methods of the Wright brothers. Step into the workshop and design a set of wings that will fly your glider...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Up, Up and Away! Airplanes
The airplanes unit begins with a lesson on how airplanes create lift, which involves a discussion of air pressure and how wings use Bernoulli's Principle to change air pressure. Following the lessons on lift, students explore the other...
Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Build a Plane Painting Machine
A challenge where student create a plane painting machine which draws a design on your airplane. The site includes the challenge, tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Hedy Lamarr: Engineering and Invention
Discover Hedy Lamarr's contributions as a woman in STEM in this video from the American Masters film, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Lamarr has received belated acknowledgement for inventing frequency hopping, the basis of secure...
Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer an Airfoil
Do you know how an airplane flys? Use this challenge to learn about flight by building a wing that can generate lift from a fan while carrying weight. Find details about the challenge, tips, and a lesson plan on this site. Also, students...
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Learning Lab: How Things Fly: Activities for Teaching Flight
Through this series of three lessons, students will gain an understanding of the basics of flight. They will learn about the four forces of flight and practice their observation skills through a number of fun experiments. In addition,...
Other
Uscfc: Jack Northrop and the Northrop Corporation
A biographical site about the man responsible for designing the sleek Vega that carried pilots on record-setting flights and for designing planes with a stressed skin over an internal frame.
NASA
Nasa: Flight: What Is Lift?
An explanation of the role lift plays in airplane take-off and flight.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Power of Food
Students imagine they are stranded on an island and must create the brightest light possible with the meager supplies they have on hand in order to gain the attention of a rescue airplane.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Art in Engineering Moving Art
Students learn how forces are used in the creation of art. They come to understand that it is not just bridge and airplane designers who are concerned about how forces interact with objects, but artists as well.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Take Off With Paper Airplanes
This lesson introduces learners to the art of designing an airplane through paper airplane constructions. The goal is that students will learn important aircraft design considerations and how engineers must iterate their designs to...
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Paper Airplanes
At this site students will use origami to fold a paper airplane that fly better than the classic dart airplane.
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Hoopster
Students create their own airplane using straws and other materials and learn the principles of aerodynamics.
The Franklin Institute
Franklin Institute Online: The Challenge of Flight
Think about the challenges that faced the Wright Brothers, then see if you can design and fly your own model aircraft. There are other sources provided to help you along the way.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Engineer a Jetliner
In this interactive lesson, students will experience the engineering design process as an aerospace engineer assigned to design and test an airplane.
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Spinning Blimps
Students create a blimp and then experiment with the design to improve its aerodynamics.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bend That Bar
In this activity, the students will learn about material properties. They will learn that engineers must consider several material properties when designing. This activity focuses on strength-to-weight ratios and how sometimes the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Balsa Glider Competition
The purpose of this activity is to bring together the students' knowledge of engineering and airplanes and the creation of a glider model to determine how each modification affects the flight. The students will use a design procedure...
BBC
Bbc News: Polish President Lech Kaczynski Dies in Plane Crash
View video footage from the scene of the plane accident that claimed the life of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the first lady and key figures in the Polish Government. Was it pilot error, or that the Soviet-designed plane was more...
PBS
Pbs Nova: Pilot the Wright Brothers' Flyer
In this interactive, find out how the Wright brothers' design of the first flyer provided lift and speed, and allowed the pilot to make adjustments in response to changes in wind speed and direction.
Michigan Reach Out
Reach Out!: Making Paper Airplane Gliders
Students learn the fundamentals of aerodynamics in this hands-on exercise.
Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: Lab Activity: Aviation
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 young scholars.
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