The key concept behind why airplanes fly, how rockets blast skyward, and how your sneeze makes it out your nose is that higher pressure always pushes.
Materials: sheet of paper
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Blow hard under a sheet of paper. It should be no surprise that it flies up. Now blow hard over the top of a sheet of paper and watch it fly up! Why does it fly up like that? Lower pressure is on the top surface, and since higher pressure always pushes, the sheet flies up!
Find out more about this key principle in the Summer e-Camp Flight Lab, which is a special part of e-Science available during the summer months.
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soooooooo cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Since the paper is drooping down, when you blow underneath, the paper moves out of the way, so it goes up. However, if you had a curved surface like you do on the top, then yes, it would experience a downward force. Which is exactly what the elevator does on an airplane – it’s an upside-down airplane wing that provides lift in the downward direction to balance out the plane for stable flight.
So why doesn’t the paper go down when you blow on the bottom of it?
what made you think of the AWESOME theme music?
Hmmm… that’s not right. I’ll have my team check into your account and get back to you.
Now we’re getting to some of the properties that surprise us. It was fun to see the surprise on my kid’s faces when the paper pushed down rather than up and when the ball stayed in the funnel when upside-down.
Also, about every other little video is coming up with the message “access denied.” Why is this?
The kids are having a great time so far. Thanks!
Chana
Unit 20 – it got moved to the Flight Lab in the summer e-Camp. Sorry for the confusion – I have fixed the links.
Aurora,
I couldn’t access unit 20. it said : ERROR 404 this page is not found. Any ideas???
Thanks, Jasmin
Oh, we loved keeping the ball in the funnel when it was upside down!