Week 10 March 8th

Week 10 of March 8th

How can something that can weighs over 900,000 lbs. fly?

Objective:
1. Students will be able to write a short constructed response on how the shape of the wing creates lift.
2. Students will be able to write a short constructed response on how the Bernoulli effect and Newton's laws of motion describe how a 900,000 lb. plane can fly.

Agenda:


1. Students will be able to take a ball and lift it into a basket.
2. Fluid-Bernoulli Final Power point (Slides 1-56).
3. Foil lab Friday with assistance of pilot (Kenny?) (worksheet needs revamped).
4. Come up with design for a robot that will be able to lift a ball.
5. Construct a robot that will win the competition.

Websites:
http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/fap/all_about_flight.html
Foil Lab Website
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html

Notes:

The Essential Ingredient of Flight

To be able to fly, you need lift. This is an easy concept because we have all lifted things at one time or another. When you lift a book off a desk, you are supplying a force through your muscles that is enough to overcome the force of gravity, which pulls down on the book. Lift gets a flying machine—an airplane, a helicopter, a blimp, a hot air balloon, or a rocket—off the ground. Each of these flying machines has a different way to achieve lift.

How Do Airplanes Fly?

What is the most important feature of an airplane, the one that really makes it possible to fly? Is the most important thing the propeller or jet engine, which gives it speed? The jet fuel? Or how about the wings? If you guessed the wings, you are right. But there is more to it than that. It is the shape of the wings that makes it possible for a plane to fly. We're not talking about the length of the wings, although that is important. If you sawed straight through the wing and looked at it, you would see a shape like this:

















This shape is very important—it makes it possible for a plane to lift off the ground. This is the shape of an "airfoil." Notice the features of the airfoil: a curved top surface and a flatter bottom one. This is the secret of heavier-than-air flight. What is it about an airfoil that makes it so special? Air flows over the top, curved surface of the airfoil faster than under the bottom, flat surface. This creates a difference in air pressure between the top and bottom of the airfoil-shaped wing. The air above the wing is at a lower pressure than the air under it, and the higher pressure pushing up on the bottom of the wing overcomes the lower pressure, pushing it down. When an airplane is moving fast enough down the runway so that the upward pressure is greater than the force of gravity, the airplane lifts off. Of course, the plane could not reach high speed without a jet engine (or a propeller) and fuel, so these are important components too. And if the weight of a plane is too great it might never go fast enough to leave the ground. But without the key shape of the wing—the airfoil—none of these things would matter