Love For Science Takes Flight At The Reed School

By Larissa Lytwyn

Humankind’s inexorable march from the Stone Age to the Computer Age has been marked by creativity and innovation. Modern day visionaries and engineers, from Edison to Gates, have been the gatekeepers of innovation.

But for Reed Intermediate School sixth grader Nathan Stein, engineers are not always people you read about in books.

Nathan’s father, Kenneth Stein, works for IBM. Each year, in commemoration of National Engineers’ Week from February 20 to 26, Mr Stein has visited his son’s classroom to teach students a new way to look at how engineering affects everyday life.

Without engineering, after all, many modern conveniences, from cell phones to airplanes, simply would not exist.

Mr Stein made that clear during his recent visit to Nathan’s sixth grade “cluster,” comprised of Michelle Vaccaro’s and Maura Drabik’s classes.

“Have you ever considered how airplanes are made?” he asked students. “What about them makes them able to stay up in the air?”

He explained how the type, design, and materials of a plane played a crucial part in the plane’s capacity for to fly smoothly and quickly.

The students then broke into groups and made their own paper airplanes from different types of materials, including notebook paper, computer paper, and oak tag. Each group hypothesized which type of plane would fly the farthest based on the type of material from which it was made.

“I thought the notebook paper would fly the farthest, because it’s such a light material,” said sixth grader Lindsay McCoy.

Lindsay’s view was shared by many of the classmates — until the reality of the flight tests proved differently.

Ms Drabik launched each group’s collection of planes over the length of the hallway. Distance was measured through a tape measure.

The students learned that while the oak tag planes were predictably too heavy to create a long, smooth flight, the notebook paper was too light! The farthest-flying plane was the kind made out of the waxy computer paper.

After the initial flights, the student groups were able to fold their top-flying plane’s wings or add paper clips in an effort to make the plane fly even more effectively.

The groups found that adding an even number of paper clips to each plane wing created a balance that made the plane easier to direct.

“I thought the activity was interesting,” said Laura Curacao after the flight tests had concluded. “I thought the notebook paper planes would fly best, but it turned out to be the computer paper types that were fastest!”

Mr Stein said he learned about the airplane activity as one of many K–12 options the Engineers’ Week website offers to engineers who are guest classroom speakers.

“I thought it was a good, strong activity with a core lesson in it that the students could remember and appreciate,” he said.

Ms Drabik said she was pleased to have had someone like Mr Stein come in and talk to the students. “It gives the kids some real-world perspective on things they learn in the classroom,” she said.

Nathan, meanwhile, said he was “proud” and just a “little bit embarrassed” over his dad’s annual classroom visits.

“Last year, [in fifth grade] we reenacted the Rover’s landing on Mars through an activity in which we dropped eggs out the windows,” he recalled. “It was a lot of fun and my friends still remember it!”

But the airplane activity was “fun” because it allowed the students to make paper airplanes while at the same time learn a bit more about the aerodynamics behind the real-life crafts.