It wasn't all fun and games. But it wasa lot of fun.
That's how most would describe the final design project for Professor Stephen Ruffin's AE1601B -- Introduction to Aerospace Engineering: design, build and launch a balsa wood glider from the running deck of the CRC.
The glider that flew the furthest distance over the vacated basketball court below won. They each got three tries.
"The winning team got 5 percent extra credit points for this assignment," said Ruffin, the official launcher of all 13 vehicles.
"What I'm really interested in is the report that they write, -- which is worth 70 percent -- because that will incorporate what happened today -- how their glider fared." The rest of the activity's grade -- 30 percent -- will be determined by how well the vehicle was constructed and how well it performed.
The official report will follow the same AIAA guidelines that 'real' airplane designers must follow for technical reports.
"So, no matter how their plane did, every team will learn how to write up a professional report," Ruffin said.
All 13 teams were given the same materials to work with -- a sheet of balsa wood, a balsa rod, one small sheet of very fine sandpaper, six thumb tacks, three rubber bands, and some wood glue.
There were no restrictions on the wood glue, which turned out to be a good thing. Ruffin estimated that about a third of the vehicles took some painful nose-dives on the first of their three runs. Without a little glue, their flying careers would have ended right there.
"After the first round, I didn't think I'd see some of them back, but they all kept coming back," said Ruffin. "And the thing is, they did better."
The most important thing, he stressed, was that the students developed a better grasp of the center of gravity and the aerodynamic center -- concepts that they studied in class.
"Basically, if your center of gravity is behind the aerodynamic center, your glider will have an uneasy flight, a lot of up and down," he said.
"But if your center of gravity is too far ahead of the aerodynamic center, you'll have a stable flight, but it won't go very far."
"They had to choose a name that had significance to the field," said Ruffin.However low their individual scores might have been, all of the teams had some pretty highfalutin' names for their gliders: Glenn (as in John), Wright (as in Wilbur) and Bolden (as in NASA), among others.
The winner in all three trials was the USA 5 airfoil R. T. Jones -- named after the late aerodynamicist who discovered the theory of the simple swept-back wing. In all three trials, it sailed smoothly past the competition, eventually earning the best score of 105'2".
Its designers, Kevin Tran, 19 of Seattle WA, Turner Glynn, 19, of Newton, NC, and Keenan Nicholson, 19, of Cumming GA received polo shirts and a lot of high-fives from their classmates.
"We just got together and researched everything we could about how to make it fly as far as possible," said Nicholson.
"Our wings had a good aspect ratio - high - and the angle of the wing was 10 degrees, which keeps it stronger. The surfaces on the back are undersized because we knew we didn't have to maneuver. We just needed to fly straight. You actually wouldn't want to be a passenger."