How Things Fly

How do rockets fly? Teams design, build, and launch a rocket made from a two-liter bottle to explore forces on a rocket such as Newton's Laws of Motion.  During the design phase, young engineers draw a diagram of their rocket and include...

Earth has more than 80,000 species of edible plants and over 66,000 different vertebrate animals. The sixth activity of 20 introduces young scientists to classification. They compare and contrast plants and animals to see how scientists...

Geologists are gneiss, tuff, and a little bit wacke. The fifth chapter of seven includes ten activities at four different levels. The hands-on activities cover fossils including how they are formed, vertebrates, invertebrates,...

Students 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. Students perform three experiments that...

Scholars participate in two design challenges concerning flight in the second lesson of the series. They design balloon crafts that have neutral buoyancy and forward motion.

Which will make it fly better? Individuals build paper rockets with fins that are launched using straws. After determining an average flight distance, they make adjustments, such as size and location of fins, and try again. A second...

Launching a rocket with a balloon�—that sounds crazy! The class brainstorms design characteristics of a rocket. Individuals build a balloon launcher and a rocket straw. Using the air stored in a balloon, the individuals launch their...

Groups explore concepts of flight by creating paper airplanes from different types of paper and testing their flight. They use the results to identify the optimal material.

Being able to absorb the abilities of other life forms may seem like something taken from a superhero movie, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. Join the narrator as he takes viewers back billions of years to investigate how...

How does the way our brains work relate to the way fish swim in harmony? An engaging video explains how emergence is the answer to both.