Group Reflection On Glider Competition

For about 2 weeks, we spent countless efforts in building our best glider for the upcoming competition cum assignment that would be held during Week 15.

You can just see mathematical calculations scribbled all over the white board and paint accidentally splattered around the table. Several prototypes of gliders were laying around and some were arranged evenly on the table as we did cross-referencing between one another. The whole table looked like a mini airport of gliders.

We did test flights and noted down the mistakes and miscalculations made to the glider.

Soon after several tries came out two flying gliders. According to our test flights, the gliders we created could glide very smoothly, given that we launched them in the correct way and not with too much force.The video showing the test flights of our gliders can be found in the previous post.

Feeling confident and prepared, we headed to class for the glider competition. The competition was split into 2 parts and in total of 5 teams participating.

In our opinion, the reason for this activity is to bond the classmates together and to make use of the knowledge we have learnt and apply it onto our hands-on assignment.

The first part of the competition happened within the classroom.
We had to launch our glider and land it as close to a black bottle placed on the floor. The lecturer will then measure the distance from the glider to the bottle. Each team had 3 tries to launch the glider. The lecturer will sum up the 3 distances and record the average. Our glider flew the furthest away from the bottle and our team ended up being last for the first part of the competition. One factor which could have caused the glider from flying much further away could be the large wings of the glider which generates more lift. Despite our team member controlling the amount of energy used to throw the plane, the plane still flew very far away. Worse of all was that the tip of the plane kept knocking into hard objects causing it to bend quite seriously.

Our Team Representative launching the Glider

Measuring of the Distance of the glider from the bottle

The second part of the competition happened outside the classroom. The objective is to throw the glider as far as possible. The lecturer will measure the distance from the starting location to the glider. Each team again had 3 tries and the lecturer will get the average out of the results.

Our plane came in last place again. We did our research and realized that the reason why our plane did not take off well was due to the sudden wind pressure change in the environment during out first try, our plane was damaged which impaired its ability to fly far. Thus in our conceding rounds, our glider did a very bad job at flying the distance.

Although it was a disappointing day, we did learn a few things from the glider competition. Firstly, before we launch the glider, we must take note of the changes that happen around the environment, such as a breeze which may cause our plane to fly off course and hit the surrounding objects, thus damaging it. Secondly, we must make sure the glider is strong enough to be able to withstand any damages when it lands or hits any object.
Overall, we enjoyed the glider making process as well as the competition as we had quite a fun time thinking of different glider designs and testing them out. What is most important was that we gained a lot of knowledge while doing this hands on assignment.