In this one-lesson activity, learners create 6 different paper airplanes by varying the angle that the wings are folded. Learners fly these planes and investigate the connection between wing angle and flight distance. This lesson can be accessed without being signed in to your Manifest account, but lesson navigation is a little easier if you have an account and are signed in. This is a great lesson to be used as a capstone to the Linear Functions micro-course, but can be included in any unit on linear functions at a point where students already have experience fitting linear models to scatter plot data.
There are 6 steps to completing this lesson, starting with step #0 and continuing to step #5. Both the teacher directions and student directions can be found directly on the handout. The teacher directions are in bold on the handout, next to the step number. If there is a digital resource that goes with a lesson activity, that resource appears on this page. Just scroll down and click on the lesson step that the resource is used in. Enjoy!
Course Content
Math Lab - Paper Airplane Flight Distance - Lesson 1
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#1 - Students watch the “Paper Airplane Intro Video”
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#2 - Students watch the “Making a Paper Airplane” video. Teacher facilitates, pausing when prompted and making sure all students have completed each step before moving on to the next.
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#3 - Students watch the “How to Prepare, Fly, and Collect Data” video and complete the described activity.
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#4 - Students watch the Flight Distance vs. Fold Angle Simulation Intro Video.
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#5 - Students simulate the linear function of best fit using the Length vs. Rotation Simulation and answer the questions below.
- #1 - Students watch the “Paper Airplane Intro Video”
- #2 - Students watch the “Making a Paper Airplane” video. Teacher facilitates, pausing when prompted and making sure all students have completed each step before moving on to the next.
- #3 - Students watch the “How to Prepare, Fly, and Collect Data” video and complete the described activity.
- #4 - Students watch the Flight Distance vs. Fold Angle Simulation Intro Video.
- #5 - Students simulate the linear function of best fit using the Length vs. Rotation Simulation and answer the questions below.