Helicopters

Movement in Air

Ask: How can you change the motion of a helicopter?

• Make a helicopter using the pattern.• Explore the motion of the helicopter as

it drops from a heightHow does it rotate?

Can you modify your design to change the rotation? to go faster or slower?

Materials available:

pattern

scissors

paperclips

Try these activities with Helicopters

• Draw a 1 foot circle on the floor and add a bowl in the center.– Place a chair at the edge of the circle and allow students to drop their helicopter

to land in the bowl.

• Use two helicopters and add paper clips to one. What happens?

• Make a large and a small helicopter and compare them.

• Collect data and graph the results.– Number of paper clips/number of spins– Length of rotor blade/number of spins

Helicopters

• As the helicopter falls, air pushes up against the blades. Because the blades are slanted some of the thrust becomes a sideways push which forces the helicopter to rotate.

• When you bend the blades in the opposite direction, the force rotates it in the opposite direction.

• Adding weight will make the helicopter spin faster.

1Cut along all the solid lines on the diagram to the left.Fold flap A forward and flap B to the back.Fold flaps C and D both forward along the dotted lines.Fold along the line E upward to give a weight at the bottom.

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