On a roll!

That how these last few weeks have been! It's crazy to think that next Thursday I'll be posting this blog with just one day left before Christmas break...but time flies! Speaking of flying, we had some fun with flight this week! The 8th grade science students had a design challenge this week to use some engineering skills on a piece of phone book paper to create something called a tumblewing. We were learning about the crosscutting concept of systems and looking into how the different parts of the tumblewing system need to work together to allow the system to operate correctly. To complete the lab, the students needed to first collect some control data by trying to "fly" a regular piece of phone book paper by propelling it with a piece of cardboard, which would create an updraft, and timing how long it took. But, predictably, it pretty much just flopped to the ground. Then they needed to engineer the tumblewings by making folds in the wing that would catch the updraft and make it spin. They also needed to add side flaps to create stability. Here is a video that was used to get the students engaged in the challenge:
Once they engineered their tumblewings, then they had to test them out and collect data that shows they could engineer the paper to fly longer than the control sheet of paper (yes, not that hard to do...) From there, however, the students needed to either try to improve upon their current tumblewing design or test out a new design. We had a variety of new tumblewings, including the one pictured here, which set an awesome record of staying in flight for 4 minutes and 57 seconds!

Mindfulness thought for the week: The happiest you will be is when you are happy with yourself.
--Inspired by Tom Holland (the new Spider-Man), from his chat with Chris Hardwick on the Nerdist (ID10T) podcast.

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