We originally had another project, we were going to make a giant glider and add a propeller to it so it would improve the glide ratio but it didn’t work out because the plastic propeller that we used kept breaking so we ended up re gluing it to the glider and it just didn’t work. So we moved on to a new project where we created a glider example and then cut out all the pieces needed to make the glider. This project ended up working really well because the example glider we made flew really nicely. So all we had to do was cut out the rest of the pieces and that didn’t take too long.
Corbyn and I worked really well together which made this project work well. We communicated when one of us wasn’t at school and we had our set tasks so that nothing got lost in translation and everything got done. Not to mention the fact that it only took us one day to make the two main gliders we used originally so we just had to tune them up, until the propellers broke. I found it surprising that it didn’t take much to get the example glider to work. It was just, a barbecue stick for the fuselage, two leading edges, two stabilizers, and a weight on the nose. I will never again use a plastic propeller. It was more hassle than it's worth.
Math
For the math part of this project we had to find the center of mass of the glider. Working with a smaller glider was much easier because we didn’t have to deal with bigger numbers. We had to find the weight of each part. So the barbecue stick, and each stabilizer and wing along with the weight in the front. We found the volume of each part by taking the length, height, and width. We added them all together for each individual piece.
We found the density of the balsa(used for the fuselage) and multiplied it out with each individual piece. We then used those numbers to find the center of mass over the entire glider. We first took those numbers and added the total up (see on the bottom of the division sign). And then multiplied the numbers by the fuselage calculations. And then divided the two (see numbers on bottom and top of division) by each other, and then rounded the numbers and got the center of mass being at 3.249.