Preliminary experiment: Flying Planes and other Flying Objects

• 

Objective 1: Introduce that all the experiments that will be performed during the following week are linked with the concept of flying.

 Objective 2: Flying: what is the meaning of this verb?

Objective 3: What is specific to

a plane when it is flying as compared to a bird, a balloon, a helicopter, and other flying objects

Explanation:

This preliminary experiment will prepare the pupils for studying the flight of airplanes. The first question they should test is “how does a plane fly?”

Finally, what is flying?

• Are there several ways of flying?

• Is there a difference between flying and falling?

All these questions are also related to the history of flight.

The pupils will get an understanding of what flying is (and what it is not) and decisions can be made what kind of flying will be treated in this topic.

Material:

Use all your imagination and give all the materials that can be used to build a flying object:

• Ping-pong ball
• Hair dryer
• Feather
• Paper
• Straw
• Balloon
• Light plastic bags
• ….

Pictures of planes, shuttle, birds, helicopter, balloon, car, buses, insects, glider, parachute ….

Maximum duration:

45 minutes

Main questions to be asked:

• What is flying ?
• Is an airplane flying ?
• Is a falling stone flying?
• Is a parachute flying ?

Main activities

Give these objects to the pupils working alone or in groups and ask them to build a flying object or you can also ask them first to draw a flying object before building it.

 

Test phase: you can stay in class to fly the object, but they will always prefer to drop it in a stair case.

Discuss with the pupils which of these objects fly and which do not fly. Ask them, what is special about of the flight of an airplane.

Prepare with them a big poster on the assumptions of what is flying. During all the module of aeronautics experiments you can come back to this poster and refine the concept with them and with their new discoveries.

• 
• 
•