eTime .::. Week Six

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	Monday 15 March 2010 Today we celebrated flight, particularly man-made flight. Humans first observed that birds have wings and most have the ability to fly. Many insects can fly but only one mammal can fly: the bat. We discovered, however, that both the flying squirrel and the flying lemur can glide. This led into creating gliders from paper. This inevitably resulted in some very exciting and noisy chaos. We then investigated the physics principle that describes the lift on an aircraft’s wing, known as Bernoulli’s Principle. We realized that lift makes flight possible and that air moving over wings causes lift. Bernoulli’s principle explains how this is so because in 1783 he discovered that when air moves it exerts less pressure. Bernoulli’s principle states that the faster air moves, the less pressure it exerts. We used our newfound Bernoulli’s principle knowledge to make a flying disc, using only paper and tape. We tossed it like a frisbee and noted that it glided for a bit and then dropped rapidly. Bending down the outer edges to form a curved lip produced the Bernoulli effect and enabled the disc to stay aloft for a much greater distance. Our task was to explain Bernoulli’s principle as simply as possible, using our own words and appropriate diagrams. Stella’s explanation is today’s exemplar.