Reflection on glider’s design competition on 26 July 2011

Today is the glider’s design competition day. All the groups brought their final design to the class.

And all the gliders have to go through two parts of competition, one is to fly the gliders within a specific distance and the other is to fly the gliders as far as possible.

Each of the group needs to appoint a designated member to launch the glider. However, we encounter a little problem here as our designated member was sick on that day, thus we have to appoint another member to replace her. Still, in the end we manage to solve the problem as each of the group members did practice a lot on how to fly the glider before the competition.

This is the picture of all groups' planes. As you can see, each of them has their own shape, colour and design.

During the competition, each of the group got a chance to look at other group’s glider’s design and its performance. We appreciated for this chance to learn from others. For example, one of the group uses recycle material plastic foam pallet to make their glider, we think that their idea is very innovative.

Overall, our group’s glider performs quite well. Especially in the second part of the competition, our plane was able to fly quite straightly, steady and far, and the average distance travelled by our glider is 880cm which is the second best result in the class. And we really admired the first one’s performance whose average distance is about 2300m. It is made of paper and rubber band. The pilot drew back the rubber band, when he released it the airplane could far very far with the aid of the power of rubber band. It was a quite clever idea.

There was still room for us to improve and we could perform better in the competition. For instance the first competition, our airplane flied a bit far from the prescribed line. It was because we launched the plane a bit harder than required. Thus we lacked enough practice to fly with appropriate strength before the competition.

This video was taken during our second competition. And you can see how our group's plane flied from it.

After doing this project, we are already able to recognize many key features in airplanes that cause them to have optimal balance, low drag and high lift.

Through doing this project, it gives us a better insight into the complexity of designing a new aircraft’s configuration.

GLIDER’S DESIGN PROJECT REFLECTION ——PART3

In order to find out a best design, we tried to fold lots and lots of different type of paper plane.

It was not an easy job at all. Since none of our group member has the experience of folding paper plane or making plane model, we have to spent time to find resources from book and the internet which teach us how to fold paper plane. However, we can’t just simply follow the steps and instruction. We have to recall all the key features which can make an airplane fly stable and far such as increasing lift or reduce drag. And with all these knowledge, we then make changes to improve on the original design.

Finally, we made out our paper plane, which is called The Avenger Flyer!

For our design, we have certain features to highlight. 

Firstly, the nose of the paper plane is heavy to ensure stable fight, and we put on a paper clip on the nose to allow the paper plane to fly further. In addition, the heavy nose will also keep the centre of gravity towards the front to prevent the plane from stalling.  

Secondly, the wings are angled upwards and winglets are added to the edge of the wings which are good features to reduce drag.

Lastly, to make sure the paper plane is entirely symmetrical and this can be check by looking down the nose of the plane. Thus, the air plane will fly smoothly and maintain optimal balance.

We incorporate all these features into our design and it works well, thus we choose this as our final design.

This picture is the source of our plane where our idea came from.

And the videos below shows the process of us doing our paper plane.

GLIDER DESIGN PROJECT REFLECTION--PART2

These are our objectives and considerations of designing our airplane:

• try up which airplane can fly more stability and fly a longer distance
• which type of material can make airplane more stability 
• how to reduce friction loss due to gravity went the airplane is flying
• how to make an airplane fly smooth without added any weight to it 
• how to add the significant features into our design. For instance: lift, drag.
• how to apply these features into our design well.
• add paperclip so that it can fly more smooth and stability on it 

These are what we had tried for our designs:

GLIDER’S DESIGN PROJECT REFLECTION ——PART1

Before we came to the class this week, each member of our group did the research individually beforehand. Thus we can try out the various designs using simple materials such as paper to compare and to choose the best design among us during the class.   

I think this is really a good practice to come to class and be well prepared. As when we are trying out the designs, whatever questions we encountered we are able to ask our teacher for clarification.

After this week’s lesson, we find that our designs still need room for further improvement. For example, we can be more innovative in our design and our aim is to make the glider more stable during flying and capable to fly a great distance. One of the group actually incorporate rubber bands into their design which make their glider able to fly far and that was really an innovative idea for us to learn from.   

And we learnt that the best way for us to get a good design is to keep searching and practicing.

Group reflection on ping pong ball exercise

At first, we rolled the A4 paper in a cylinder shape, and blew the balloon and held the mouth of the balloon to make sure that the air is trapped in the balloon.

Next, one person hold the cylinder shape paper straight and place the ping pong ball on the top end of the paper, then the other person move the balloon to the bottom of the paper. Lastly, the person holding on to the balloon will release the air in the balloon, and the air will be released into the cylinder paper and eventually reach to the ping pong ball and push the ping pong ball up.

But this did not work out as our ping pong ball remain stay on the top of the cylinder paper, and we were stuck at the moment and wonder what goes wrong with our design. Our teacher pointed out our mistake saying that we may try to change the length of the cylinder paper.

Thus, we cut the cylinder paper and make it shorter. Then we using the shortened cylinder paper to do the exercise again, and to our surprise we manage to blow up the ping pong ball to a certain height. And the ball was quite stable in the air when it is being blown up.

And eventually we also know what our mistake is in the starting of the exercise. Because when the length of the cylinder paper is too long, there would be more friction being created along the cylinder. Moreover, the chance that the air getting run off is also very high. Thus the solution is to cut the cylinder paper short to reduce the friction and kept as more air as possible inside the cylinder paper.

Individual Reflection on Ping Pong Ball Exercise-CHENG QIU SHI

What I have done in this Ping Pong Ball exercise was to think of the idea and practice it out with the help of my group mates.

At first, when teacher told us to blow the Ping Pong ball as high as possible using one balloon, a pair of scissors, a roll of scotch tape and two pieces of A4 paper, what came to my mind is to have the aid of the trust from the balloon to push the Ping Pong ball up.

Depending on this idea, one of my group mates began to blow the balloon. But how to use it to blow the ping pong ball was the problem. And I thought we should use a cylinder to connect the ball and the balloon and to make the air concentrated thereby deliver the air from the balloon to the ball. Then I and my group mates began to roll up the paper and tape it. We put the ball on the top of the cylinder and adjoined the cylinder with the mouth of the balloon. We tried once, when we let go the mouth of balloon, we found that the ping pong ball could not fly very high, we felt very frustrated. But teacher’s suggestion reminded us to make the cylinder shorter. We made another shorter cylinder and tried again, then it was more successful and the ball was quite stable in the air.

I realized that shorter cylinder could make the ball fly high. Because there would be less friction and the less air would be lost in the cylinder.

Individual Reflection on ping pong ball exercise _CAI CHAO LING

Today the exercise we did is to blow a ping pong ball as high as possible by using a pair of scissors and A4 papers. The lesson we learnt ahead before doing this exercise is about the engine of an aero plane. And our lesson and the exercise are related in the sense to create energy and power.

We did not success at first, because our ball cannot even be blow up. However, our teacher did help us to correct our mistakes and we manage to blow our ping pong ball up to a certain level.

Later on, our teacher asked each group in the class to demonstrate how high their ping pong ball can be blowing up.  I like this little session of exchanging knowledge and experience, because I learnt a lot from other groups which is doing better than us.

The detail of the exercise would be included in the group reflection.