Birds of PLAY

This was in the Make magazine a couple of years ago, and when we were participating in the Tech Challenge 2016, Taking Flight, we made these gliders to prototype (we thought using the gliders in the shape of birds would be fun at the competition) and understand the mechanics of flight.

I don’t quite remember what the instructions were except that we drew gliders in the shape of birds on a foam plate and experimented with different combination of shapes in gliders and tails.

This is a great project you can do with your children/students inexpensively. I hope you try this project and have a lot of fun.

List of Supplies:

• Foam plates
• Paper clips
• Scissors
• Adhesive tape (optional)
• Pens or Pencils

Build Instructions:

There is no perfect shape to start off. Experiment with the size and width of wings to find your best design.

As you can see, I have four different shapes and five different tails. The gliders are identified with letters in the back, just like the tails are identified with numbers.

The gliders are "lettered" to find the best combination of shapes and tails.

Gliders are assembled. Ready for flight testing.

I put aielerons on this right, bottom glider to see if they made any difference, but they didn't. In fact, it didn't fly as well as the one above it (which is basically the same glider design except for the aielerons)

Again, with 4 different shapes and 5 different tails, you can have a lot of fun flying them and figuring out which combination works the best. 

In these videos below, I've recorded two different combinations which flew the best. Enjoy & have fun!

Video 1

Glider B, Tail 2 combination

Video 2

Glider D, Tail 5 combination

Find your own best combination and have fun with Birds of PLAY!

Hint: DON'T try to throw these. Just hold them by the tail area (without skewing the tail position), and let go gently.