Aeronautics in America

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Panel 2: Aeronautic Activities That Really Fly!

an image of the Wright Flyer with a background of a shuttle take-off

Soaring into the Standards:
Enhancing your curriculum with some of the AIA resources can help your curriculum soar ever closer to a more standards-based approach. The Aeronautics in America project has lots of excellent resources that you can bring together in various ways to help enhance the study of aeronautics with your students. These resources are essentially “curriculum enhancements” that can help you bring additional relevance and excitement into your science classroom.

Paper Flyers - Would you like to fly a plane? Make adjustments and examine their effects. (More)		Boomerangs - Here is a chance to make a boomerang of your own and test its flight path. Does it return? (More)
The Spool - Can you figure out how the air pressure changes? (More)		The Loop Plane - Will it fly? Have you seen a paper airplane made with circular wings? (More)
Straw and ball - Here is an experiment you can do with air pressure. (More)		NASA's latest plane (ARES) is nothing like other planes that you may have seen. (More)
Ping Pong Ball Curves - We can toss a ping pong ball with a rapid spin and the ball will curve in flight. (More)		Fins? Here is a nice NASA activity to help you understand how fins assist the stability of flying objects. (More)
Alka Seltzer Rockets - One of the more exciting areas of advancement in aeronautics is that of engines. (More)		Up and away! - Measure a balloon's lifting force. Don't jeopardize your chances! What is buoyancy? (More)
Model of a Dream Celebrate 100 years of aeronautic history by building a model of the 1903 Wright Flyer. This was the first piloted, heavier than air, aircraft that could take off and fly under its own power. (More)		Balloon Flight - What determines the load a balloon can lift? A spreadsheets allows students to record and graph balloon flight data obtained from an experiment. (More)
Fly High! - Why don't we simply fly a passenger jet into orbit? Use a spreadsheet to find out what happens to air pressure with increasing altitude. (More)		Lifting an airplane as large as a B-52 seems like a huge industrial strength job. If a small force is applied to enough squares of surface, then even a very heavy object can be lifted. (More)
The Condor - Often large cash prizes influenced aeronautic development. (More)		The U-2 Airplane - One may encounter unexpected problems when trying to fly twice as high as a passenger jet. (More)
Flying Fast! Investigate how airspeed will influence the lift onan airplane wing. (More)		Altitude - Temperature Data obtained from a flight may be graphed to show temp-alt relationships. (More)
Eureka! Find the lifting force of a balloon. (More)	NOTE: The last 7 activities, while not yet linked, may be found by going to: AIA Members > shared files > panel 2 activites.