In Year 7 Science this term, our focus is in the physics space as we looked at forces. Over the past two weeks, students have participated in a collaborative task in which they created and flew planes. This task required them to follow instructions to make a plane out of balsa wood and a small motor, and fly it using a centrifuge machine. Students needed to test the height and speed of their flight, incorporating some key maths skills. Once they had collected data from this flight, they needed to collaboratively decide on a modification to make to their plane, using their knowledge of forces. This modification needed to improve their plane’s height or speed during flight, so ultimately reducing the drag or increasing the lift forces acting on their plane. Over the next week they will analyse their data and determine the effectiveness of their modifications. All students engaged positively in this task and were able to support each other in getting their planes off the ground.
Lance Houlihan
Wellbeing Community Leader Yr 07
Here are some comments from our Year 7 students:
My favourite part of the activity was building the plane because I liked building it with my team. Lily B 7G
One of my favourite bits was testing if it would fly, I was really interested to see if it was going to fly or not. Georgia K 7B
Through this experiment, we learned that it’s not easy to make a plane. You have to make sure you follow the right instructions, so it doesn’t flop. Amarlie R 7G
One of my favourite bits was testing if it would fly. I was really interested to see if it was going to fly or not. Alice O’C 7B
My favourite part of the activity was seeing our plane fly first try which was really exciting. Our modified plane went up first try too. Maddie P 7B
We noticed that our plane was going really slow on the first fly and then we made some changes to our plan. It went faster on our second. The thing that we changed was putting a little thing on the top of the wing so then it would be more reliable. Briah C 7G
I enjoyed working with my group because we all worked really well together and made our plane amazing. Mila K 7B
This was one of the most fun activities we’ve done because we were learning during the whole day. It didn’t feel like it though because of how interesting the whole day actually was. Lily S 7B
