Hands-on Activity in Class

We were given a set of materials consisting of 2 A4 papers, a balloon, a ping pong ball, scotch tape and scissors. The aim of this activity is to propel the ping pong ball into the air, as high as possible.

Jia Le trying to blow the balloon, haha. XD

Group mates hard at work coming up with a solution.

This is already Attempt #n. 

We even did research! Talk about being diligent.... Or desperate. HAHAHA.

And finally.................. THE LONG AWAITED OUTCOME.

WE DID IT!

We made quite a number of attempts, thinking that the mechanism would be rather complex. However, when we finally got to the desired outcome, it was actually not as complicated as we thought. We just had to roll the paper and fit the ping pong ball snugly at the bottom of the paper roll. Next, just release the air from the balloon and TADA! The ball was successfully propelled into mid-air!

Watch how we did it. ^^

Individual Reflection - By Guo Ren

Personally, I believe that our group have think to hard when what was needed was just a simple trick.
Ironically, thinking straight and formally didn't allow us to get the correct answer, stupid ideas (by me) actually worked.

So what actually worked is that having a cone shaped paper and the ping pong ball in it, and having the balloon's outlet to be directly below, just take note that the smaller end of the cone must not be so SMALL, and fit into the outlet of the balloon. If you do so, then it wouldn't work. make the smaller end just relatively smaller than the other end and allow the air from the balloon to push the ping pong ball. Due to limited papers, I couldn't conduct experiments to find the relationship of the height of ping pong ball pushed up by air, and the narrowness of the smaller end of the tube(cone).

Overall, it was a fun experiment, seeing everybody thinking hard, trying to get ideas to work etc.
And a fun note: We're the second group to be successful before all other groups became successful.

Jet Turbine and Game Quiz

In the lesson today, we had a demonstration of how a jet turbine works and a game quiz where our class is split into two groups to compete.

For the jet turbine demo, we were told to take note of the temperature inside the turbine, as well as the Revolutions Per Minute (RPM). After putting on the headphone, we could hardly hear a thing until the turbine started up, and we could actually hear the noises made by the engine, thus the actual noise level must be really deafening. When it first started, there was a blast of non-luminous flames at the output and a smell of kerosene burning. We saw that the highest RPM went up to over 80,000. The temperature in the turbine increased to a few hundred as well.

Next, for the game quiz. Our group managed to answer every single of our questions correctly and when the other group answered theirs incorrectly, we solved them instantly!! :D
Our score was 230 which was more than two times of the other group's score. WE WERE ALL EXTREMELY ELATED!! :D We did not study in vain. :)

Thoughts on jet engine and game (Welon)

The jet engine was kind of scary honestly. The fact that we can hear it through the headphones relatively clearly kind of makes me shudder thinking what will happen to my ears if I was listening to it without the headphones. It was pretty cool though, and the fire was interesting but kind of short. It did remind me of something I've seen in the past though, can't really recall what it was but perhaps it was the engine of a plane. The air stank though, as air was used up and we could smell the fuel I think.
Nonetheless, it was a fun experience overall

-Welon

Shuang Yu's first solo flight!

In this flight simulator, it was pretty easy to control the flight as I just had to press a few buttons to move the plane towards the target. It allowed to get a better understanding of how to control a plane and what each individual controllers do. Through this simulator, I managed to gain more knowledge through a fun software! I hope that there will be more simulators for us to try out next time.

In the first mission, I used the rudder to control the yaw of the flight to face the noose of the plane towards the target point. Next, I used the elevators to control the pitch of the flight in order to fly at the same level as the target point, and the rudders and ailerons to position the plane to fly towards the target. At the last mission, I made use of mostly the ailerons to roll the plane into the position in which it can fit through the slot. After which, i used the elevators to make sure that the pitch is right so that the plane will not collide with the barriers.

Although this simulator is rather easy to control and achieve the targets, I believe that it is not so in real life as there are so much more for us to learn. This simulator triggered my interest in flying a plane so much more that i used to. I hope that in the future, I will have a chance to fly a real plane, at least once in my lifetime!

Jia Le's thoughts on the solo flight stimulator

At the start of the stimulator flight, to be honest, I have no idea what I was doing. All I could see is patches of clouds and blue sky. All i could rely on is the cross and box on the side of the screen as well as the screen which shows us whether the plane is on level.

Slowly, I got the hang of it and started clicking too quickly on the controls, causing the aeroplane to move too fast and out of my control. I decided to be more patient and click slower.

To me, the rudder and ailerons were particularly difficult to control.
When trying to turn the rudder, I could not really tell whether the plane was turning or if there is any changes to the yaw. If this is a real flight, with the clouds moving, I think I would not be able to fly it properly.
Whereas for the ailerons, it was difficult to control the exact angle which I want it to be, especially on the last mission of the game.

What I find most difficult about this game was during the last mission, where we had to use all three controls at once to make sure that the plane reaches its target on time.
Once the plane was not on level, it was difficult to control the elevators and rudders to move the direction of the plane nose as time was limited.

Though I did not manage to make the plane exactly parallel to what the mission required, I passed the mission which made me really glad.

Just playing around the stimulator was difficult enough, and it made me wonder what will it be like if we were to fly a real plane.

Cheryl's Thoughts on My SOLO Flight

So, we went through a short lesson on airfoil and wing geometry today. The focus points for today are mainly on the basic aircraft flight controls: ailerons, elevators and rudders.

The ailerons:
- Move surfaces on the outboard portion of the wings
- Roll the aircraft (one wing tip to move up and the other, down)

The elevators:
- Move surfaces at the rear of the horizontal stabilizer
- Control the pitch and position of the plane (where the plane nose is pointing towards), as well as the angle of attack of the wings

The rudders:
- Small moving surfaces at the rear of the vertical stabilizer
- Controls the side-to-side motion of the plane

With this basic knowledge about the flight controls, we then proceeded to challenge ourselves with the flight simulator. For me, I feel that it isn't that difficult once you get the directions and angles right. The challenging part is that we have to be very precise about the angle of the plane, especially when tilting. Even the slightest angle of 1 or 2 degrees off can cause the plane to be steered away from its destination. Therefore, it is important for pilots to take note of this during flights.

Flight Simulation Experience

Hi,

I am Kuah Guo Ren, S10078199H.
My experience regarding the simulation hows that it's quite difficult to actually control a plane, as the direction of where the plane is going is quite difficult to determine and whenever there's a need to tilt, I also need to overcome the yaw that is going on. The views that the pilot can see through the screen is also quite limited.

That is all.
Thank you and regards.

Welon's thoughts on Air Flight Simulation

Yes, I think it relatively easy to control a plane. In a way it is rather similar to driving a car (at least to me). The way the steering wheel turns is similar to that of a car's, with an additional pull and push portion to tilt the plane's nose up and down. At the same time, however, it is different as the pedal actually turns the plane left and right while the steering wheel rolls the plane.

It was kind of interesting. Initially I got stuck at stage 2 because I didnt know how it works, I guess the fact that the map is 2D and the camera view is so small doesnt really work well. I dislike the fact that there aren't any instructions on how to read the map, which kind of made me fail.

However, the simulation does help us to get used to the basic controls. The simulation prevents the plane from tilting too much (working as a limiter) but I think the simulation actually seems quite different from the actual driving of a plane. But I guess I shouldn't ask too much of a simple simulation; at least it did show us how to pilot a plane just a little.

Interesting stuff from Lesson 1

I think there's actually quite a number of interesting stuff we have learnt in our first lesson, so I'll log down some of them here.

We were reminded of Newton's 2nd and 3rd law (which I believe we have kind of forgotten since it has been a while since our GCE 'O' levels, xD)

We briefly touched on SI Units (which we probably won't forget since we'll be using them a lot)

We went through the 5 layers of the atmosphere: (we will mostly be covering the 1st 2 layers only)
- Troposphere
o Layer where most life forms reside in
o Up to 11km above sea level
- Stratosphere
o Ozone layer
o 11-48km
- Mesosphere
- Thermosphere
- Exosphere

Properties of air that we will be focusing on: temperature, pressure, density and viscosity

Then finally we covered the laminar flow (smooth flow), turbulent flow, how airfoils work, mach number (a measure of speed, object speed/speed of sound), reynold's number (inertial forces/viscous forces) and how the air speed indicator works.

Think I covered most of it at least, hopefully the notes for the troposphere and stratosphere helps in our revision for the quiz, since it was mentioned it'd come out.

And that'll be all for this post, hope the air flight stimulation will be fun

Cheryl says Hello!

Hi all, it's Cheryl here. Hope the rest of you like the layout for the site. Suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Basically, we already got the first step done, which is to set up the site and get our names up here.
TASK CHECKED!

Aerospace seems pretty interesting, especially after our first lesson last week. See you guys soon!