Students in the AeroSpace Engineering class are working on a project where they have the chance to conduct experiments individually with a hand-made airplane. 

Each student takes turns throwing their airplanes up in the air and competing to see who could fly the farthest. 

“So they also have to think about weight and balance because if you have too much weight on the nose, it’ll go into the ground. They don’t have enough weight on the nose, it’ll fly straight up and come back at them,” engineering teacher Mr. Benjamin Creen said.

Through every trial, students were becoming frustrated or excited as each one went on. 

“Yeah, that happens a few times,” Olivia Fehling (11) said. “It goes up and comes down and almost takes out the crowd. Then they shoot it sometimes and it doesn’t go off the thing (rubber band launcher) it just comes back and hits them. Or it just explodes the second it launches.” 

One student in particular, Ryan Lipski (11), explained to me in detail the ideas he learned from partaking in the project. 

“It’s showing you the limitations and how far you can go and how minimalist you can go, I guess,” Lipski said. “So you’re having to find that in-between where you can get that actual good plan to flight. But I think finding that in-between is apparently a struggle.”