Wind Tunnels

 Greetings to everyone who is following me. In this series, I am sharing how I design my STEAM curriculum.   Post #1 - The introduction,  Post #2 - After the topic is chosen,  and in this post, I will talk about one of my random ideas, wind tunnels.

It seems crazy, even to me, that I would be thinking about building wind tunnels with 3-5th grade students during a 14-day unit. Rest assured, this is only an idea. There's no guarantee that I will act upon this idea. However, I did find some good information and resources. 

Before I get too excited about wind tunnels, I must let you know, I did flesh out the Next Generation Science Standards that I will cover in this curriculum. Yes, I will share them with you in a later post. They weren't the first thing I thought about, but I know it is necessary to identify them. Enough about the standards and on to wind tunnels. 

As I was looking through the books I mentioned in my first post of the series, I came across a section on airstream evidence. (It's on pages 24-25 in the book, "Air * Wind & Flight by Mick Seller Science Workshop.") Wind tunnels help engineers understand the fluid dynamics of the air when it encounters an object. In the book, the illustrator uses the side of a box, a hair drier, and some ribbon to represent a wind tunnel. The illustrations do look like they will work, but I have some reservations about the effectiveness of the open space and the thick ribbons they used. I also wondered how I could get enough hair driers.

Eureka! I don't need hair driers. I bet I could use old computer fans. It just so happens that the tech crew in my district are in the process of pulling all of the teacher's desktop computers and replacing them with laptops. I immediately emailed the tech crew and asked if I could reclaim the fans. This morning I received a response letting me know they will have a pile of old computers ready for me to salvage the fans from in mid-August. (I'll try to remember to take pictures for that post.) I don't know if these fans will be strong enough to make a good wind tunnel. I'm still excited about the possibilities. Plus, who doesn't want some computer fans handy for other activities?

Next, I searched online looking for DIY wind tunnels. Here's what I found:

Homemade Wind Tunnel - This wind tunnel looked pretty good but was definitely out of my price range. I did like the engineer's use of the big PVC pipe. After looking at this design, I also realized that I want the tunnel to test the paper airplanes not necessarily wing shapes.

How to Make a Wind Tunnel - I'm a big fan of Instructables buy the way. This wind tunnel is bigger than I was thinking. I learned something though. If I put tubes between the fan and the testing chamber, the airflow will be straighter across the surface of the airplanes. In this model the engineer using incense to provide the smoke. I don't want to use incense. At first, I thought of using tinsel but I remembered I have a smoke machine. Options are always a bonus.

Wind Tunnels Educators Guide - This says it's for 6-8th grade. There aren't any pictures to show the assembly, but the instructions sounded fairly simple. This gives me hope that I might be able to come up with a working wind tunnel.

A DIY Wind Tunnel for Your Desktop - I took one look at this baby and backed away. I did go back for another look. One thing I learned is that some wind tunnels pull the air through instead of push it through. It looks like the engineer used some PVC pipe to pull the air through straight.

Paper Airplane Wind Tunnel by Straw - This video showed a setup to test the aerodynamics of an airplane without smoke. I'm leaning towards building something like this example. I do think It would work better if it was enclosed in a box. 

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable that the students and I will be able to build something to test the fluid dynamics of their airplanes. I'm going to keep thinking about this before I settle on a specific design.

In my next post, I will talk to you about my conversation with Jeff. He's an airplane mechanic and former flight instructor.

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."

-Antoine de Sanit-Exupery


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