Other
Plane Math: Activities: Plane Math Enterprises (Design an Airplane)
Students are trained on how to design an airplane. The activity demonstrates how math applies to aeronautics.
NASA
Nasa: History of Flight
How did we learn to fly? Resource takes users back through time to discover where the history of flight all started. Offers links to games, art and stories as well as activities.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Makes Airplanes Fly?
Learners begin to explore the idea of a force. To further their understanding of drag, gravity and weight, they conduct activities that model the behavior of parachutes and helicopters. An associated literacy activity engages the class...
Other
Lesson Plan Activities: Amelia Earhart and Airplanes
This site features several activity ideas and activities on Amelia Earhart and airplanes for young learners.
Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: Lab Activity: Aviation
This site from the Illinois Institute of Technology provides a student lab activity in which the flight of a paper airplane is investigated and studied. Designed for primary grades, but easily adaptable for junior high students.
Smithsonian Institution
National Air and Space Museum: Wright Brothers: Interactive Experiments
Three interactives in an online exhibition about the Wright Brothers. The first is an engineering activity on the forces of flight, and is accompanied by a lesson plan for Grades 6-8. The second is a gallery of original artifacts related...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Balsa Glider Competition
The purpose of this activity is to bring together the students' knowledge of engineering and airplanes and the creation of a glider model to determine how each modification affects the flight. The students will use a design procedure...
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Supersonic Dream
Examine how fuel use affects the mass of different planes during flight. This lesson teaches students how to determine the per person fuel cost of a transatlantic flight for seven airplanes, and display the results on a bar graph. Three...
Vocabulary University
My vocabulary.com: Wright Brothers
This has a variety of vocabulary puzzles and activities using 31 vocabulary words pertaining to the Wright Brothers. It also offers an extensive vocabulary word list for aviation and airplanes.
Smithsonian Institution
National Air and Space Museum: Wright Brothers: The Invention of the Aerial Age
Beautiful, well-done site from the Smithsonian on the Wright Brothers: Who were they and what was the importance of the era they ushered in? Their roots are traced back to the Great Migration. Classroom activities and interactive...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Amelia Earhart: Aviator, Record Breaker, and Activist
Through two primary source activities and a short video, students will learn about Earhart's passion for flying and determination to succeed as a female aviator.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Windy Tunnel
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle as it relates to winged flight. The students will use computers to see the influence of camber and airfoil angle of attack on the lift.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Heads Up
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate some of the different parts of an airplane through the construction of a paper airplane. Students will build several different kinds of paper airplanes in order to figure out what makes an...
NASA
Nasa: Beginner's Guide to Aerodynamics
Includes exhaustive information and a wealth of activities pertaining to aerodynamics and the physics of flight.
Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: Lab Activity: Helicopter
The Illinois Institute of Technology lets young scholars investigate the aerodynamics of a helicopter, focusing on the variables which effect the lift, thrust, drag, and weight. Students investigate the effects of aerodynamics on a wide...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Adaptations for Aeronautical Engineering
This activity first asks the students to study the patterns of bird flight and understand that four main forces affect the flight abilities of a bird. They will study the shape, feather structure, and resulting differences in the pattern...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Building a Paper Airplane Using Bernoulli's Principle
This is a culmination activity used after young scholars have studied Bernoulli's Principle as part of a unit on forces and fluids. Students will use the Internet, textbooks, library resources and their cooperative learning group to...