Sourced by Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, students and educators will engage in building a helicopter and making it fly. Adaptations of extra weight or shortening blades will alter flight abilities making for an exciting...

Print and cut out the template for the helicopter. Then experiment with adding and subtracting weight, or changing the shape of the copter or the blades to see what makes it fly best.

The Illinois Institute of Technology lets students investigate the aerodynamics of a helicopter, focusing on the variables which effect the lift, thrust, drag, and weight. Students investigate the effects of aerodynamics on a wide board.

Dora Jean Dougherty Strother (b. 1921) (center) was a human factors engineer and test pilot for Bell Helicopter Co. in 1961 when this photograph was taken, and had just broken a helicopter altitude record (at 19,406 feet) in a Bell...