Struggling to remember group names, 6 students decided to go to the left side of the room, where they knew stood the group that focused on organization and planning. We soon learned that this group turned out to be Boeing. While we were eager to get started, we were unsure of exactly where to start. We had decided that  Skye, Owen, Abbey and I would start researching different parts of the glider, while Tessa and Darcy would work together to come up with our very first glider measurements, with the help of the information the rest of the group would find. We were able to test our first wings and stabilizers 2 days later.

After a week into the project we had tested many different wings and stabilizers, JD also joined our group, while Tessa had transferred to another class. As we were getting more into testing our gilders, we were having trouble finding something for everyone to do. We had encouraged the group to do any research that they thought would improve our glider. While some people tried to do as much research as possible, others worked to test each of our gliders at least 5 times, to help figure out what to change. When Skye was working to organize all of our data, and JD, Abbey, Darcy and Owen were focused on launching the gliders and taking more data (although we were well aware that 4 people was unnecessary for launching), I had eventually found myself with nothing helpful to do. I decided to find something to research. While JD had become intent with researching elliptical wings, Darcy had suggested that I do research on aspect ratio, as we didn’t have any information on it. Through this research I had found that usually, gliders with long wings, a smaller tip chord, and a bigger root chord flew farther than others. This information had gone against all of our data, where the shorter wings, with a shorter tip chord and longer root chord, that we had made, had more success than longer ones. Although this was true, we had decided to make longer wings with a smaller tip chord and larger root chord, because the longer wings we had tested previously, had a much larger tip chord.

The next day we received our newly printed longer wings. Although we had made these wings, it just so happened that the day before, we had misplaced our weights that went at the end of the glider. Since we couldn’t find replacements, we had taped a much larger screw to the top of the fuselage. With all of the added unnecessary weight, when it was time to test our longer wings, the glider went down faster than we had anticipated. Since the very next day was the day of the final flight, we didn’t have time to make new wings. We had decided to go with the wings and stabilizer that flew the farthest when we had used our previous weights. The wings we ended up using were 150 mm long, and had a 30 mm root chord, 30 mm tip chord, an angle of attack of 5, and a sweep angle of 0.1. When we had tested with our original weights, we had very high numbers, as the furthest our best glider had gone was 46 feet.

The day had come when we had to put forth our best glider, to see which team’s glider would go the farthest. At the time, we didn’t think much about the new weight, because we had only tested one pair of wings with it, so we still had high hopes. It wasn’t until during the final flight, that we saw our plane going down faster than we ever thought it could. It wasn’t until after the final flight that we had realized how much of an impact the weight we had chosen to put in the front had. Our glider ended up as the second farthest, which was unexpected, even by Amory, as we knew that we had the highest numbers during testing.

     What I learned from this project is how important it is to do research, and make a plan before going into a project like this. I learned how each individual part impacted the glider, and without research we would have never found out what parts of the glider we needed to change. Another thing I learned is that taking enough data is essential in order to move forward in projects like this. We were only able to figure out how to move forward, and how much we needed to change a certain thing, by testing each glider at least 5 times, and recording the data.

We tried to stay as organized as we could, and had collected so much data, and had done so much research, we had done everything we were supposed to do, but in the end we weren’t as successful as we had hoped to be. Through many broken fuselages, and dents in the wall, overall, I learned that if I were to do this project again, I would get buckets of rubber bands, and keep better track of the glider’s weights.