Helicopters Movement in Air

Ask: How can you change the motion of a helicopter? Make a helicopter using the pattern. Explore the motion of the helicopter as it drops from a height How does it rotate? Can you modify your design to change the rotation? to go faster or slower? Materials available: pattern scissors paperclips

Try these activities with Helicopters Draw a 1 foot circle on the floor and add a bowl in the center. –Place a chair at the edge of the circle and allow students to drop their helicopter to land in the bowl. Use two helicopters and add paper clips to one. What happens? Make a large and a small helicopter and compare them. Collect data and graph the results. –Number of paper clips/number of spins –Length of rotor blade/number of spins

Helicopters As the helicopter falls, air pushes up against the blades. Because the blades are slanted some of the thrust becomes a sideways push which forces the helicopter to rotate. When you bend the blades in the opposite direction, the force rotates it in the opposite direction. Adding weight will make the helicopter spin faster.

1 Cut along all the solid lines on the diagram to the left. Fold flap A forward and flap B to the back. Fold flaps C and D both forward along the dotted lines. Fold along the line E upward to give a weight at the bottom. 6