Use your balsa wood glider to name the parts of the airplane and describe their functions.

Glossary of Terms and Credits

How Airplanes Fly - A Teaching Outline (w / movies)

Using Digital datasets--- One of the objectives of the Virtual Poster is to increase your understanding of digital images so that you can use them effectively. You might use the knowledge of imagery that you acquire to construct meaning from airplane or space data.

The four images in this dataset cover essentially the same region but are collected using different techniques. Look for some landmarks and see how each image gives a different perspective. Unzip this dataset and open it in DataSlate in order to examine the 4 images.

Compass headings and vectors

The Pizza Story continues (include wind vectors?)

Information for Remote Sensing How different platforms may be used to conduct 'remote sensing'.

History of Remote Sensing (Powerpoint)

Toy gliders, made of balsa wood or styrofoam, provide an excellent way for students to study the basics of aerodynamics.

Fly your glider. Does if fly in a strainght line or turn to the right or left?

Dihedral Angle for an Airplane Wing

Here is another image of a small balsa wood glider. The plane is being held in place by a notebook resting on the stabilizer. The stabilizer is being held in a horizontal position parallel with the table top. The wing passes through the fuselage so that the fuselage is located at the midpoint of the wing.

Dihedral angle The image shows the small glider from the front. What is dihedral? Of what use is it? Do all airplanes have dihedral? Can you measure the dihedral angle? Are the angles the same for each wing? If the angles are the same, will the airplane fly in a straight line? Which way will this glider natually turn as is flies?

Find the Glide Angle for Your Glider.

1. Launch your glider and let it glide to the ground. You may need to make adjustments to your airplane to allow it to fly in a straight line. Measure the horizontal distance from the launch to where the plane landed. You may want to make a series of flights. (Why?)

2. Measure the vertical distance from the launch point to the ground.

3. Knowing these distances, sketch the triangle formed by the vertical distance, the horizontal distance and the flight path. Label these sides.

4. Find a way to discover the small angle. What are some ways to do this?

A possible reference: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/glidang.html

Now that you have made adjustments so that your glider will fly straight, try to adjust it so that it will return to you after launch. What adjustments did you make? With which adjustments did you start? Were the adjustments you made initially correct?

Angle of Attack 1. Write a definition for 'angle of attack'. 2. Find a way to measure the angle of attack. Protractor? Describe how this might be done. Print an image of a fuselage for determining 'angle of attack'.

Find the Angle of Attack using DataSlate.

To find the angle of attack for this airplane, download the 'Angle of Attack' dataset, then download and open the dataset in DataSlate.

Tutorials for DataSlate operation: http://ois.unomaha.edu/essea/dataslate/copyrite.htm