Today students were introduced to our first real engineering project of the year. In honor of the Flugtag event being held at the Louisville Waterfront this Saturday, students will be constructing their own single-wing, ultralight gliders based on the FPG-9 model developed by Jack Reynolds at the Academy of Model Aeronautics's National Model Aviation Museum (and then incorporated into the Aerolab modules developed by Alcoa). Today was dedicated first to reviewing the stages of the Engineering Design Process, and then to focusing on development of a prototype. Students carefully examined videos of the two top Flugtag record-holders to identify strategies and key structural components, and then discussed constraints and specifications of their crafts. Finally, they set to work building from an initial template, which will later be modified based on results from preliminary testing.
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