rAs Kids📄 ⬇️⬇️⬇️ 💨 ⬆️
🎒 What you need
- two sheets of paper or thin cardboard, one flat and one crumpled into a ball
- a plastic bag
- a bit of open space
✋ Do this
- Hold the flat sheet and the crumpled ball high, one in each hand. Drop them together. Watch which lands first.
- Say why out loud: the flat one has to shove a lot of air out of the way, so the air holds it up longer.
- Now hold a sheet flat in your hand and swing it down fast. Feel the push back against your palm. That push is lift, and you can feel it right now.
- Open the plastic bag, hold it by the handles and run. It fills and drags behind you. That drag is the same air fighting back.
- Wave a piece of cardboard downwards over a pile of dust. The dust flies away from you. Point at it — that is the air being pushed down.
- Last: drop the flat sheet edge-on instead of flat. It falls fast. Same paper, different amount of air pushed.
💡 Why it works
A drone hovers by throwing air downwards all the time. The air pushes back with the same strength, and that push holds the drone up. If it pushes a bit harder, it rises; a bit softer, it sinks. Everything else on a drone is just clever ways of controlling how hard each propeller pushes.
🔥 Challenge
Make a paper shape that takes longest to reach the ground from the same height. Test three designs and time each one.
📖 New words
liftthe upward push that holds a flying thing up
dragthe air pushing back against something moving through it
💨
Air Pusher
Tap when you have finished this module.