Other ideas for air-based STEM projects

For the following ideas, you can modify the student worksheet – design your own aircade.

Design a land-yacht

Check out the exhibit guide – Sailing and visit Air Playground exhibition at Scienceworks to see how the land-yachts work. There is also another land-yacht in the Sportsworks exhibition.

Set up a large fan in your classroom and metre markers with masking tape along the classroom floor.

Have your students design a land yacht using recycled materials: cardboard, skewers, bottle caps with holes drilled in the top, plastic bags, fabric triangles etc.
Get them to test their designs in front of the fans and modify.

What challenges could you set them? Distance? Speed? How could you measure that together as a class?

Flying paper-cup challenge

Challenge your students to use easily found or recycled materials to make a paper cup fly.

Some inspiration from YouTube makers:

Will they make propellers, use the potential energy of a rubber band?

How can you measure the speed or the distance of the flight as a class?

Design a hovercraft

A hovercraft floats on a cushion of air which reduces the friction between the bottom of the craft and the surface it is moving across.

Set your students a design challenge to design and build their own hovercraft using recycled or easily found materials. How will they create the cushion of air underneath the vehicle?

Younger students can make this hovercraft with old CDs and balloons. See hovercraft acitivity on PBS KIDS

Older students might like the challenge to try to make one with Styrofoam and a fan: