Week 3
Session 2
Guiding Question
How can we make sand stand tall?
Subquestions
What are the different ways an airplane can turn?
What changes do you make to an airplane to make it turn or go up or go down?
Outcomes
Define roll, pitch, and yaw regarding the three motions of an airplane.
Explain how flight control surfaces control the motion of an airplane.
CT Components
Simulation
Airplane’s turn with aileron, rudder, and elevator
Abstraction
Effects of different axes
Modeling
Building and testing a glider with control surfaces in different positions
Roll, Pitch, and Yaw Activity
Introduce topic by asking students if they’ve heard of roll, pitch, or yaw before.
Define the three axes airplanes can move about as in drawing.
This website, How things fly? Pitch, Roll, & Yaw, has a good graphic showing roll, pitch, and yaw axes, also shows location of rudder, ailerons, and elevators
How elevators on the horizontal tails control pitch - Controlling Pitch
How the rudder on the vertical tail controls yaw - Controlling Yaw
An airplane’s motion often involves a combination of roll, pitch, and yaw. An example is when an airplane turns, it rolls and yaws both.
Image Credit By Yaw_Axis.svg: Auawise derivative work: Jrvz (Yaw_Axis.svg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Control Surfaces
Small-group Hands-on Scientific Inquiry
All airplanes have moving surfaces that control the movement of the airplane by changing the amount or direction of lift created by the surface. The three most common examples are aileron, rudder, and elevator which we focus in this project.
The following animation, How do Airplanes fly? explains control surfaces and how they work (from 2:20 to the end is most relevant to this unit).
This animation, How it Works Flight Controls, has an animation showing controls, linkages, and control surfaces for a small airplane.
Delta Wing Glider
Small-group Hands-on Scientific Inquiry
Directions and materials for this activity can be found in the Flight Guide on pages 60 to 68.
Each group will need a copy of the template found on page 66.
After building the gliders students will need to adjust the weight and balance by attaching a paper clip or binder clip to the fuselage, similar to the weight and balance activity done before. Students should vary the position of the clip until the glider flies the greatest distance in a straight line. They can record the position and distance flown for their attempts in the Delta Wing Glider Record Sheet.
Since the delta wing glider doesn’t have a rear horizontal stabilizer, the ailerons and elevators are combined into one surface called an “elevon”. Pages 67 and 68 of the Flight Guide give worksheets with activities students can use to test different orientations of the glider’s elevons and record the flight path of the glider for each test.
Although the worksheets focus only on the elevons, students could also try changing the orientation of the rudder and observing the effects of the changes.
A possible extension for this activity is for the students to change the size and/or shape of the wings and test the different wing designs to see which ones work the best.
Additional Activities
The following activities for those students/groups who are ahead of time and completed the above activities in the session.
Controlled Flight
The introduction includes an explanation of roll, pitch, and yaw and how they’re controlled
There are three levels, basic is the easiest.
The program only works on Microsoft Internet Explorer and uses a tool called Unity Player to run. Students will probably need to download and install Unity Player. It’s pretty easy and quick though. Once installed students may need to restart Internet Explorer.
Online Flight Games
Once complete students can use the following flight simulator as a game activity.
Resources
Problem Solving Process Diagram
Foam for delta wing glider
Plastic knives to cut out glider
Delta wing glider template (page 66 of Flight Guide)
Delta wing glider worksheets (pages 67 and 68 of the Flight Guide)
End of Session Reflection and Debriefing
5-10 minutes
Teacher briefly explains the computational thinking (CT) skill embedded in the Problem Solving Process Diagram. Using the problem solving process diagram, the teacher will ask students to identify what kind of problem solving skills/process/computational thinking they used in this session and explain how they used it. The following are some sample questions that can guide the debrief.
What did I learn today?
What problem solving skills/processes or CT components in this diagram did I use today?
How did I use the problem solving skills/processes/CT components?