Monday at U Design Camp
We had a great day at the U Design Camp. A reminder of your homework assignment. Bring in a 2 liter soda bottle.
Skystreak
The students built a Guillow Skystreak in the morning. Guillow sells a nice variety of balsa wood and foam airplanes. We played around with changing the position of the wings, which led into our afternoon discussion of pitch, yaw, rolling, and the parts of an airplane.
Cadet Airplane
They students also started to build a Guillow Cadet. They Cadet is a complicated airplane which takes about 3 days to build as there are periods where you need to wait for the glue to dry. The steps are complicated, and it is a good demonstration in which groups can follow directions, and can work methodically and carefully, versus those who try to finish quickly (so they can go play the flight simulator) At least two groups chopped up their fuselage into tiny piece.
The Cadet Airplane from Guillow
They also built a Whitewings Trainer. White Wings are paper airplanes on steroids. They are well engineered and usually made from a combination of Balsa Wood and Paper. When properly launched with a rubber band catapult, they can stay aloft for a few minutes. The Trainer is a nice plane because the students can adjust the camber (shape) of the wind and the dihedral angle of the wing to change the aerodynamics. Many of the students also started to build either a WW Jet Plane or a Bi-Plane. Tomorrow we will finish building the advanced White Wings and if the weather holds out we can launch them at Lunchtime.
Later in the morning we had a lecture/activity where the students investigated Hyperspectral Imaging with Professor Josh Semeter . For our activity, the students looked at the optical spectrum using a diffraction grating of sunlight and the light from fluorescent fixtures. Hyperspectral imaging is looking at the spectrum of different points in an image, which will be useful for looking for atmospheres around planets in other solar systems. Prof. Semester is also the Director of the BU Center for Space Physics .
