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The Beginner's Guide to Aeronautics |
Welcome to The Beginner's Guide to Aeronautics |
Beginner's
Guide to Aerodynamics +
Index |
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Beginner's
Guide to Propulsion
+
Index |
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Beginner's
Guide to High Speed Aerodynamics +
Index |
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Beginner's
Guide to Model Rockets +
Index |
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Beginner's
Guide to Kites +
Index |
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In the 21st century, airplanes are a normal part of everyday life. We see them fly over, or read about them, or see them on television. Most of us have traveled on an airplane, or we know someone who has. Do you ever wonder how airplanes fly? What causes the lift that gets the airplane off the runway? How does a pilot control the movement of the airplane? Why are the engines on an airliner different from the engines on a fighter plane? How does aerodynamics affect the flight of a model rocket or a kite? The information at this site is provided by the NASA Glennn Learning Technologies Project (LTP) to give you a better understanding of how aircraft work. Each page at this site describes a single topic related to basic airplane aerodynamics, propulsion, model rockets, and kites. At the top of each page is a slide that illustrates the topic. The slide is accompanied by a caption that explains what the slide is all about and goes into some detail about the physics and math related to the subject of the slide. There are often links and references to other slides and sites where you can find additional information. For most of the
web pages, activities are available for teachers to use in class. These
activities were developed during teacher workshops including:
You can access the activities by clicking on buttons at the bottom of each page. As an aid to teachers, we have organized the activities by grade level (K-6, 4-6, 6-8, 9-12, 11-12) using color-coded buttons. As a further teaching aid, you can download your own copy of any slide by using the blue "Show Slide" button located at the bottom of each page. Clicking on this button displays the slide alone, without the captions, and oriented in such a way to give you the largest, most detailed copy. The colors are intentionally ugly to give a good contrast on a black and white printer. You can use your browser's Print command to make your own copy of the slide. Each slide should fit on a single sheet of 8-1/2 x 11 paper. If you find that a slide takes two sheets, try changing the margins on printer setup in the browser menu. (A 75% reduction is suggested for MAC users.) This site was prepared to provide background information on basic aerodynamics and propulsion for math and science teachers, students, and life-long learners. We have intentionally organized the BGA to mirror the unstructured nature of the world wide web. There are many pages here connected to one another through hyperlinks. You can then navigate through the links based on your own interest and inquiry. However, if you prefer a more structured approach, you can also take one of our Guided Tours through the site. Each tour provides a sequence of pages dealing with some aspect of aerodynamics. Software
in Schools NOTICE --- In 2001 the site was modified to support Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Many of the pages contain mathematical equations which have been produced graphically and which are too long or complex to provide in an "ALT" tag. For these pages, we have retained the (non-compliant) graphical page and have provided a separate (compliant) text only page which contains all of the information of the original page. The two pages are connected through hyperlinks. More Fun stuff... |