Here is our final glider design; it took a lot of work and many retries, but in the end it worked really really well!
The challenge here was to, ideally, build a glider that went further faster then any one else's. We could only use balsa wood, tissue paper, and hot glue.
Thus we started brainstorming! Firstly the rules, any idea is good, and constructive criticism is welcome, as well as building off others ideas. First I brought out the Helicopter, but no one seemed partial to that. Then we breifly considered just making a parachute in the hopes no one else's glider would function correctly. We quickly scrapped that idea. Then we figured a big wing is probably best. Then we thought of adding a second smaller wing, but we were unsure if that would help much. Nevertheless, we went with the second.
Knowing that we had to fry far and long, and we could only work with Balsawod and tissue paper, we got to work solidifying our design.
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| Final, glorious solution |
We built a simple airplane, and it worked out great! Then we found our design in balsa wood (BAE systems had handed them out to robotics clubs), and it worked even better!
After constructing our glider we found that it fell to earth fairly well. We desired that it started to fly and would never land. Thus we decided to change the "crashing" part of our designs. The question was how? se we decided to add weight. It worked great! The added weight kept it in the air for much longer. After adjusting the weight many times, we eventually came upon a sweet spot that made the glider fly very well.
Our glider flew very well, beating everyone easily. Thus I would have changed nothing, our glider preformed better then I thought it would.
