Scoil Mhuire Kilvemnon

K’NEX Steps to Engineering
Aeroplane Project Kilvemnon NS 2007

The Theme of this year's Project was 'Celebrating the Past, Creating the Future. '
We chose aeroplanes as our project and studied and researched flight in lots of different ways.
How does our model fit into this year’s theme?
As the theme of this year’s project is Celebrating the Past, creating the Future we chose to work on aeroplanes as our engineering invention. We looked at the project from the beginning of man’s obsession with flight right up to modern day aviation.
Celebrating the past:
The first powered flight took place 104 years ago. We have worked on an aeroplane timeline of all the most important flight related facts. We learned about many of the famous figures in the history of flight:

• The Wright Brothers
• Alcock and Brown
• Amelia Earhart
• The Red Baron
• We researched the role of aeroplanes in World War One and Two.

Creating the Future:
We also emailed Ian Nicholson (engineer with NATO) who answered our questions on modern day flight.

Why we chose Aeroplanes for our project:
We were very interested in flight and had learned about it in our history book last year and because we had a flight expert living in our village we decided to learn more. We were inspired by Vincent Vaughan and all of those who fly. It was a challenge to make aeroplanes and learn about flight.
A Local Angle:
A local man from Mullinahone named Vincent Vaughan built his own plane from scratch and he came to our school and spoke to the class about the dynamics of flight, building his own plane and we also took part in a simulated flight on Google Earth. We started in Croke Park and flew over Dublin.

Project: (In Class Activities):
We downloaded videos from with Real Player from You Tube and looked at them in class.
1. History:
Wright Brothers:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=uT2dQB_OgFE
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbwZ3XluK0

WW11:
We learned what it was like to be child in WW11 exploring everything from rationing to blackout curtains.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2children/index.shtml


2. Music:
We have learned the song ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and watched this video which features a planes flying over Wyoming Valley to the song. You can see the controls of the plane and it feels like you are in the plane.
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=uH-kg4H523E

3. Poetry:
We learned a poem about planes that Alison found at home.

4. Science:
We researched how a plane takes off and lands. We worked out the four elements that allow a plane to fly; drag, thrust, lift and weight. We discovered the differences in plane speeds (MACH)

5. Construction:
We have looked at different ways of model making:
LEGO: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=aNHliNd3SRc&feature=related

6. Art:
We drew plans of how we wanted the plane to look and then afterwards we painted pictures of our planes.

7. English:
We have written our own essays on flight and 5 and 6 class are reading Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden at the moment. This book is written about a brother and sister who are evacuated to the country during the Battle of Britain in WW11 when Germany was flying over English cities and bombing them.

8. Research and editing:
We researched flight on the net, looked up books in our school library, got more information from our local libraries in both Clonmel and Kilkenny. We emailed Ian Nicholson who is in NATO.
The 6 class have edited this project.

9. Photography and Videography:
We took photos of our models and got photos from home from Airshows. We filmed Vincent Vaughan’s visit to the school and will edit the film after Christmas on our
Mac Book.

10. Computer Simulation:
We explored how to control an aeroplane in flight using Google Earth flight simulator. We started over Croke Park in Dublin and flew over Dublin.

10. For the Future:
We will edit the film of our visit from Vincent Vaughan.
We are visiting Kilkenny Airfield with Vincent Vaughan.
We are visiting Shannon Aerospace to see their aircraft.

Click here to
download our Project

(PDF File: Acrobat reader required)

Back Next