Thirty fifth-graders at Peaxy’s Aero Design Challenge workshop landed at Hiller Aviation Museum on Oct. 28 to learn about flight science. They spent the morning visiting discovery stations at the museum and making wooden gliders with Peaxy volunteers guiding the way. At the end of the challenge, they all sent their planes skyward to see their models tested in the real world.

Peaxy sponsored the challenge at Hiller in San Carlos, Calif. Four Peaxy volunteers helped run the workshop, which is part of the 2017 Bay Area Science Festival. 

Kids at the workshop spent three hours making a wooden glider model and learning about aeronautics.

The Hiller Aviation Museum’s main gallery had a number of stations to guide them, including:

• Wind tunnel experiments
• Examination of full-scale aircraft
• Flight simulation
• Glider flight trials

The children were asked to form two teams to construct, test, improve and present a glider that satisfied the defined design requirements.

They were guided to four different discovery areas to understand the objective: build a wooden glider model and test its flight distance. Kids were excited when they finally lined up to see how far their personal gliders could go. Based on observations of total flight distance covered, they came back to their work space to a make some final modifications on wings, rudders and nose to see if they could improve their distance.

The Bravo team came out on top with an 18.5-foot measurement, nearly reaching the previous flight distance record of 19 feet.

All students and Peaxy volunteers had an enjoyable day and can’t wait until the 2018 challenge.

“The students were very creative and learned a lot. Pitch-Roll-Yaw,” said Tina Dunton, a Peaxy volunteer. “Come to think of it, I learned a lot, too!”