November 6, 2019

Welcome back to the High School Corner!

 

In the High School, we decided to celebrate Halloween in an unusual way with an exciting and educational field trip to iFly . For those who may not be familiar, iFly is an indoor skydiving experience in which participants ‘fly’ in a vertical wind tunnel. This field trip served as the culmination of all the work we had been doing in physics over the course of the year. We were able to make connections with concepts such as Newton’s Laws, the various forces and variables which come into play when an object moves, and the many formulas which draw connections between those formulas and forces. 

 

As with any good field trip, this was more than just a fun way to pass the afternoon. In fact, before we could even get to flying, we had to use everything we had learned to make a guess as to what wind speed would be required to keep us floating. In other words, we were tasked with determining our own terminal velocity. This proved to be quite the challenge requiring a great deal of estimation, because when we calculated the margin of our experimental error after our flight, for most of us it was quite high. It was a great way for us to apply our knowledge to a real-world situation in a fun and engaging way. We hope that you enjoy taking a look at the videos of everyone’s time in the wind tunnel!

 

Click here to see our video of the experience.

 

Jacob B and Sophia D