Explore the ways basic control surfaces allow flying machines to perform the way the pilot wants... even from the ground!
Info for Parents:
Adults should help younger students with measuring and cutting, as well as monitor them while launching the aircraft with the rubber band to prevent eye injuries.
Goals & Objectives
Four forces of flight: How can we generate thrust?
Aerodynamics: How do we control an aircraft in flight? What modifications must be made?
MATERIALS
• Pencil or writing utensil
• Foam board or plate
• Two bamboo skewers
• Rubber band
• Paper clips and coins
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Ruler
Background Information
In the earliest days of building and testing human-carrying flying machines, the two biggest problems that experimenters had to solve were the questions of power and control. Airfoils and how they generate lift were well understood, but keeping a flying machine moving forward quickly enough for them to work always seemed to require an engine that was too heavy for the glider to carry, leading to widespread use of steam-driven catapults, such as those used by Sir Hiram Maxim and Samuel P. Langley. Furthermore, any attempt to control the direction of the flight often ended in disaster. Even the greatest of the early glider builders, Germany’s Otto Lilienthal, came to a sad end in a glider crash because he lost control. It was not until the Wright brothers began their work that aviation pioneers understood that pilots had to be able to adjust the aircraft’s flying surfaces in flight themselves. The Wright brothers’ approach, in which the entire length of the wing would be warped up or down, meant that aircraft would be unstable and more difficult to fly, but that was the price to pay for greater control. A few years after the Wrights’ first successful flight, a rival American aviation pioneer named Glenn Curtiss decided to create separate movable control surfaces—ailerons for roll, elevators for pitch, and rudders for yaw—rather than warp the entire wing. This approach persists on both full-scale and model airplanes to this day.
Go Further
Former students of AMA’s Flight School will recognize the glider as quite similar to the FPG-9! If you have made one of those gliders as well, do you think it could be launched the same way? How might it behave differently or similarly? Why? creative Tips Make sure you never point your glider at another person or anywhere that it could get stuck when launching. It is always best to use a wide-open space outdoors or a large room with a high ceiling, such as a gymnasium
