AERODYNAMICS
September 8,14, 2021- Students learned about aerodynamics and movement of air around a car specifically built for speed. They also learned about drag, or air resistance, one of the "3D's of Speed" (drag, downforce, drafting), which limits how fast a car can go.
Each student built a paper model race car and did trial runs using ramps, marking how far the car went. They then tested air resistance by adding an index card to the back of their cars. The force of air pushed against the index card slowed the race cars. As a result, the race cars without the index card went farther than the ones with the card taped to the back. After the learning was done, students competed with each other to find out who built the best aerodynamically race car. After 31 cars went down the ramp, Nayeli became this year Aerodynamics STEM project winner with the distance of 18.2 feet. Congratulations Nayeli! Photos by: Rosalie |