This past weekend the entire family helped out Joaquin with his 2009 Science project for school.
His project was not as complicated as the past two in 2007 or 2008 but it had some interesting science to it.
See, he was going to experiment on different wing types and how they affected flight. At first, he scared me by asking me if we could build a small wind tunnel to test the wings he was going to build.
Oh boy…started to get nervous. But then I reminded him that this year I was not going to help him as much. He’s an eight grader and he should do this on his own. Which he did…with a little help from Dad, Mom and little Sis.
After deciding not to build planes out of balsa wood – we lucked out by finding a particular good foam plane at good ‘ol Hobby Lobby. Pretty cool that it had all of the wing positions too. He could modify it and test the different wing types. Plus it was powered by a wind up rubber band propeller.
Then I noticed something on the rack next to it. This cool looking wind up device that you could use to wind up the plane without using your finger.
AND – it had a COUNTER too! Wow…way cool.
I had to buy it just to try it out. What will they think of next?
We also needed a controlled environment so referring back to one of our favorite family shows, MYTHBUSTERS, Joaquin called the school and asked if we could use the gym for the test flights. They said, “Yes” and we showed up on Saturday afternoon to do his trials.
Daddy laid out the tape, Emmy would place the cones where the plane landed, Mom would photograph with Joaquin running the experiment and documenting the results. We were going to build a launch ramp out of cardboard but the flimsy wheels on the plane would make it bank right even before it took off so Dad was recruited to wind it up and launch it consistently.
I was pretty giddy because that meant I got to using the battery operated “winder-upper!”
All in all – he got some good results. Now he’s got to crunch the numbers, get his data posted and then create his presentation. I created a gallery of some of the images if you’d like to see them below.
…and sorry folks…I didn’t videotape it this time. 🙂
Beto
