Balsa Wood Glider
For this year's MESA competition, my high school robotics class will be making Balsa Wood Gliders. In this project, you and your partner design a plane that can fly the fastest. We use a program called WhiteBox Learning to help us design the plane. It has many tools to help one visualize their design model in 3D. With this program, one also has the ability to put their glider to the test with a virtual airshow. Here you can see how fast your plane goes and modify it as many times to get the best time possible. With getting the best time possible many factors are important and make a difference. Such factors could be ballast, the wings X and Z offset, wing shape, and mass.
We had to keep track of our planes, how we modified each plane, and how it effected the end result (flight time).
All of mines and my partner, Steven's, data can be found here.
All of mines and my partner, Steven's, data can be found here.
Along with that, we had to make charts that show the relationship of mass to flight time.
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Mines |
My partner, Steven's |
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This is our combined graph |
Mesa Day
The day of the MESA competition was Saturday, April 20, 2013. All our students from Pittsburg High School went to Cal State East Bay and competed in different competitions such as the math competition, the balsa wood glider, and a bridge. There were several different things one can do such as an egg drop, and other math contests as well.
On the way to the competition, in the bus, the glue cracked on my plane, I didn't think this would be a problem because it's only the glue not the actual wood. Because of that, I didn't worry much and when the time came to fly our plane, I just flew it how I normally would. The plane didn't go as far as it did when we practiced in class, and also on side of the wing, where the glue was cracked, came off.
Maybe I was a little disappointed because it didn't do as well as I hoped it would, but I was still happy that my plane made it to the competition and competed. I was also happy that I had such an opportunity to show what I had accomplished in my class.
Our plane flew for about 3 seconds
On the way to the competition, in the bus, the glue cracked on my plane, I didn't think this would be a problem because it's only the glue not the actual wood. Because of that, I didn't worry much and when the time came to fly our plane, I just flew it how I normally would. The plane didn't go as far as it did when we practiced in class, and also on side of the wing, where the glue was cracked, came off.
Maybe I was a little disappointed because it didn't do as well as I hoped it would, but I was still happy that my plane made it to the competition and competed. I was also happy that I had such an opportunity to show what I had accomplished in my class.
Our plane flew for about 3 seconds
I competed in the Math Bowl competition as well and was my first time in a math contest of any kind. We had four people in our group and we took a group math test together. It was different than I expected because of I though it would be completely silent and that the groups would be separated and we would talk only when we needed to. But, it wasn't like that. All the groups were together in one room and we were allowed to talk in our groups whenever we wanted and decide which answer would be best.