Aviation, Aeronautics and Aerodynamics

Up, up, and away! Take your classes on a physics adventure. Learners explore the concepts important for flight. They experiment with the Bernoulli Principle while learning the forces that act on airplanes in flight.

Aspiring aeronautical engineers demonstrate different forces as they construct and test paper airplanes. This lesson plan links you to a website that models the most effective paper airplane design, an animation describing the forces...

Students brainstorm what it is like to fly on an airplane and discuss the parts of a plane. Students construct a paper plane of their own, decorate it, have a competition, and discuss the importance of each part of a plane and the role...

Three activities allow young flight engineers to understand the 4 principles of flight (weight, lift, thrust, and drag), to construct a glider, and to create a propeller. Multicultural history and literature are integrated by reading...

Demonstrate lift to the class that is studying aerodynamics. In the stream of air produced by a blow dryer, little physicists place a wad of tissue paper and a spherical figure to compare. Or, if you have a vacuum cleaner and beach ball,...

Young scholars explain basic principles of aeronautics such as gravity and lift. In this How Things Fly lesson, students visit the interactive, hands-on How Things Fly gallery at the Smithsonian. Young scholars perform three experiments...

Includes exhaustive information and a wealth of activities pertaining to aerodynamics and the physics of flight.

How do airplanes fly? It's not magic. Learn about the forces that help (and hinder) airplane flight.

In this science fair project, the student will make a wind tunnel to test how the formation of birds in flight affects flight efficiency. Make the bird models out of Legos and have fun with this project. The Science Buddies project ideas...

Using the Cartesian coordinate system, future flight experts plot points to determine whether or not an airplane will fly. With the four forces of weight, lift, drag, and thrust represented in different quadrants, your physics learners...