To discuss before the warmup:

This warmup adventure is intended to walk your students through the engineering design process. Explain it briefly beforehand using this graphic, courtesy of our friends at Iridescent‘s Curiosity Machine.

You can also have students watch this video from NASA for Kids that talks through the steps of the process. Emphasize that it’s good when a test run doesn’t turn out the way we expect. That allows us to go back, improve the build, test, and redesign as needed until the final creation is even better than it would have been before.

Plan, build, test:

This warmup can be done individually, or in groups. Have your students browse through the many plane options at FoldNFly.com, pick a favorite, then challenge your students to create the plane without looking at the instructions.

Have them consider what each plane is designed to do, and keep that goal in mind as they choose and build their plane. Curious what planes we chose to feature in our header? We picked the Sprinter and the Star Wing.

Give students at least 5-10 minutes with the first piece of paper and only the image of the plane they want to build. Have the students test their plane’s flight. Ask what works, and what they would improve. Set the first plane to the side.

Redesign, build, and test again:

Next, give students the second piece of paper, the tape, and the paper clips. Have them build their second prototype plane using what they learned from the first plane. Allow students to run more test flights. Set the first two planes to the side.

Back to the drawing board:

Now that the students have worked through the engineering design process on their own, allow them to follow the FoldNFly.com instructions while building the next version of their plane. Run test flights with all three planes.

Of the three planes, which one flies better? Why? What did they learn from their first two prototypes that they included in the third plane? How would they improve the design from FoldNFly?

BONUS:

Check out the kickstarter video for the first-ever smartphone-controlled paper airplane. It only took two years and 57 different versions, something you should definitely point out to your students.

For more warmup activities, we recommend Curiosity Machine‘s engineering design challenges for flight, such as Build a Glider, Control a Microraptor’s Flight, Engineer a Balloon Helicopter, Build a Stomp Rocket, and Design a Powerful Bird Wing.

One goal of TAME’s competitions is to help students envision a future in a STEM career. For this reason, all teams must assign roles just like a real engineering team. Each person is expected to complete their assigned “deliverable” during the competition. Feedback from participants over the years suggests that this helps students speak up in their role even though they do not know their teammates. Students who use professional titles during the Engineering Design Challenge seem to take more pride in their work and be more likely to identify with a future in STEM.

Testing Arena from 2014 State Competition:

Volunteers assembled this testing course in under an hour at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, which was the Host and Presenting Sponsor for the State Competition. However, no special aeronautics equipment was used. You and your TAME Club students can create this same course using hula hoops, plastic cups, chairs, desks, tables, and painter’s tape. Again, keep in mind that this challenge can still be fun and educational with a scaled-down version of this plan.

Ready to tackle the challenge? You can download a PDF version of the 2014 Engineering Design Challenge Team Instructions using the button below. Click here to download the 2014 Engineering Design Challenge Team Scoring Sheet to go with this challenge.

Role model moment

 

 

Tamara Crawford is a TAME Board Member who works at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics as a Senior Aeronautical Engineer, F-22 Aligned Technologies. She is a member of the Advanced Technical Leadership Program, a highly selective program within Lockheed Martin aimed at molding future technical leaders for the enterprise. Her most notable project was leading the effort to select, organize and store the thousands of tools necessary to build the F-22 Raptor. Watch video of the F-22 Raptor in action here.

In 2016 Tamara won the Special Recognition award at the BEYA STEM Conference. Recognition from BEYA is one of the most prestigious and competitive honors in science, engineering, and technology management. In the award’s 30-year history, thousands of America’s most creative and innovative professionals have been nominated for this nationally recognized honor. With that said, fewer than 1000 individuals have achieved the distinction of receiving the Black Engineer of the Year Award.

See more role models on TAME’s Pinterest: Women in STEM and BIPOC STEM Role Models.

 

Bonus:

Ask students how they think they would build their planes if they were going to scale it to the size of a jumbo jet, fit to carry real people. Use this TED Talk as a jumping off point for discussion of future ways to engineer and build planes: Bastian Schaefer: A 3D-printed jumbo jet?

Jump into the physics of flying with a quick yet crystal clear explanation by MinutePhysics in How Do Airplanes Fly? If your students like that, check out the follow-up video, How Airplanes Are Made. It will give you a taste of what it was like for TAME students at State in 2014 and 2015, who got to see the massive factory where engineers like Tamara Crawford work at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics to build fighter jets.

Want to see how the 2014 competition turned out? Check out the video here.

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Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills (TEKS) for this Adventure

 

Middle School TEKS Tie-Ins:

6th Grade Science

• When collecting data use the International System of Units (SI), construct tables and graphs, using repeated trials and means, to organize data and identify patterns; and analyze data to formulate reasonable explanations, communicate valid conclusions supported by the data, and predict trends
• Students can practice appropriate use and conservation of resources, including disposal, reuse, or recycling of materials when designing the planes
• Students can identify and describe the changes in position, direction, and speed of an object when acted upon by unbalanced forces and calculate average speed using distance and time measurements

6th Grade Math

• Have your students measure the flight distance with multiple tests and use that data to calculate mean distances, graph the data on scatter plots, and discuss variables and ways they could change their designs to fly farther.
• Students can use different measurement systems and convert back and forth between the two

7th Grade Science

• Students can practice appropriate use and conservation of resources, including disposal, reuse, or recycling of materials when designing the planes
• When(If) collecting data use the International System of Units (SI), construct tables and graphs, using repeated trials and means, to organize data and identify patterns; and analyze data to formulate reasonable explanations, communicate valid conclusions supported by the data, and predict trends

7th Grade Math

• Solve mathematical and real-world problems involving different and similar shapes, and scale drawings of paper airplanes
• Have your students measure the body and wingspan of the paper airplanes and have them calculate the wingspan if the airplane was at different sizes

8th Grade Science

• Students can practice appropriate use and conservation of resources, including disposal, reuse, or recycling of materials when designing the planes
• When collecting data use the International System of Units (SI), construct tables and graphs, using repeated trials and means, to organize data and identify patterns; and analyze data to formulate reasonable explanations, communicate valid conclusions supported by the data, and predict trends
• Demonstrate and calculate how unbalanced forces change the speed or direction of the paper planes motion; differentiate between speed, velocity, and acceleration; and investigate and describe applications of Newton’s laws

8th Grade Math

• Create a scatter plot graph with data that includes how the speed of an airplane is affected by the wingspan
• describe the data associating with linear, non-linear, increasing or decreasing
• Have students be able to rotate, reflect, translate and/or dilate the sketches of the paper airplanes on a coordinate graph

 

High School TEKS Tie-Ins:

 

Geometry

• Have students sketch the top, side and front views and use those views to find the surface area of the paper airplanes
• Have students determine the area of the composite figures the paper airplane contains

Physics/Integrated Physics and Chemistry

• Students can collect data and make measurements with precision and record data using International System (SI) units
• Organize, analyze, evaluate, make inferences, and predict trends from data; and communicate valid conclusions
• Describe and calculate the paper plane’s motion in terms of position, displacement, speed, and acceleration
• Students can measure and graph distance and speed as a function of time using the moving planes; and investigate how the paper plane’s motion changes only when a net force is applied
• Assess the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration, noting the relationship is independent of the nature of the force
• Students can develop and interpret free-body force diagrams of their paper planes