In a couple of weeks I will be teaching a class for the
Wisconsin Afterschool Conference in Madison Wisconsin. This will be my second
time teaching for the conference and this time it will be the project from my
latest website article Foam Plate and Straw Gliders. I think this should be an ideal afterschool
activity because it is so inexpensive, doesn’t require special tools, and
should be relatively safe.
In addition to teaching the building and flying of the
gliders I hope to demonstrate how a rather simple concept can be taken many
directions. For me the idea of foam
gliders started at a slightly more complicated level with the Foam Jet II and
then I tried to simplify the idea with additional glider designs. The HammerDown Catapult Glider was based on using a foam meat tray in the wing which
eliminated joining so many foam sections together as was the case with the Foam
Jet II. Yet I wanted to build another
foam glider that required less preparation and did not require a hot glue gun
to assemble the pieces.
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| Foam Jet II Glider |
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| Building Hammer Down Catapult Glider |
Even with the idea of the foam plate and straw gliders I
will take this another direction Thanks to a suggestion by Slater Harrison aka
The ScienceToyMaker. He suggested the
planes would be more popular if they were powered by a rubber motor turning a
propeller. I took one of the glider
planes and added the rubber power and it worked better than I imagined. It is
my plan for the class to first build a glider and then convert it to rubber
power.
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| Propeller Added to Foam Glider |
Read About & See Pictures From My Workshop at Wisconsin Afterschool Conference
Bill Kuhl
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