Wrap up the unit in one final design. Pairs use their knowledge of aviation to design new flying machines and record how their designs take into consideration the forces that act upon airplanes. The pupils determine whether their designs...

Up, up, and away! Take your classes on a physics adventure. Learners explore the concepts important for flight. They experiment with the Bernoulli Principle while learning the forces that act on airplanes in flight.

This Discovery Education activity provides the information needed to understand the basics of flight. Before taking off, young pilots learn the eight stages of the engineering design process. Small groups then design and build...

Watch your marshmallows fly. The engaging STEM activity has groups create a catapult to launch marshmallows. After testing their prototypes, they consider improvements and redesign their catapults.

How do rockets fly? Teams design, build, and launch a rocket made from a two-liter bottle to explore forces on a rocket such as Newton's Laws of Motion.  During the design phase, young engineers draw a diagram of their rocket and...

It's the law—every action requires a reaction, no matter how small. Pupils experience two demonstrations of Newton's third law of motion as it relates to thrust in the 10th segment of a 22-part unit on flight. Using their mathematical...

With the use of a model rocket kit, aspiring aerospace engineers work cooperatively to construct and launch a rocket. A preparatory reading assignment is included, covering Newton's laws of motion and information about the first...

How high will it fly? Pairs build straw rockets and launch them at different angles and determine the height and horizontal distance of the flight path. Teams make conjectures about how the angle affects the measured distances and use...

How can you launch an object that isn't propelled by air? The resource provides directions to build a launcher to launch rockets made of two-liter bottles. The launcher, built mainly from materials found at the local hardware...

Ready, aim, fire! Launch to a new level of understanding as scholars build and test their own catapults. Learners explore lever design and how adjusting the fulcrum changes the outcome. 

Does the position of the clips make a difference? The activity provides directions to build and test a paper rocket. Pupils attach paper clips to the rocket in different configurations and measure the distance the rocket flies each time....

Using PVC pipe and aquarium tubing, build an altitude tracker. Pupils then use the altitude tracker, along with a tangent table, to calculate the altitude of a launched rocket using the included data collection sheet.

Using a teacher-built wind tunnel constructed from a paper concrete tube form, a fan, and a balance, individuals determine the amount of drag their rocket design will experience in flight. Pupils make modifications to increase the...

When going for distance, does it make a difference at what angle you launch the rocket? Teams of three launch foam rockets, varying the launch angle and determining how far they flew. After conducting the series of flights three times,...

Blast off! An engaging hands-on activity has pupils create rockets powered by Alka-Seltzer. They learn about the physics behind these rockets throughout the process.