1st Annual Road Less Traveled Science Fair

Look we won! What was the winning project you ask? Where's the awesome display? Ummm... we didn't make a trifold posterboard... it's a virtual science fair! This post is the display! (And everyone who participated was a winner. :P )

Well, for our project, we played with flying things. Originally it was just going to be kites, but we expanded naturally into paper airplanes as well.

Did you know you can make a great homemade kite with a paper, a pencil, tape, string & a plastic bag? Thanks to this link, we made our own kites. :) Unfortunately, we did it on a day when there was no wind. Ironic since about every other day is pretty windy here right now. But we had fun trying!

After that experiment, I promised myself we'd go kite flying on a windy day soon after. Well, we kind of did...a friend brought their awesome kites to a park day and the boys had a lot of fun helping them fly their awesome kites. (One was shaped like a working pirate ship!) Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, and it was beyond the scope of my phone camera. (I tried...) But beyond that, well, I procrastinated too long. Oops.
I asked Dinoguy what we needed to do to have successful kite flying and he said: "Wait for a windy day." So we learned that lesson well. :)

We did however, make paper airplanes several times instead, with the help of an awesome book called Championship paper planes that Fixitman owns. Trainboy preferred the basic jet model with large wings, while Dinoguy tried out a few of the fancier options (his favorite was the Thunder bomber, challenging mom's folding skills). I tried one of the non traditional looking models and was (a bit) surprised at how well it flew. (It looks like a U in flight!)

I learned lots of interesting stuff about making paper airplanes while folding them for the boys. Did you know the US uses non standard paper sizes? The A4 paper used by the rest of the world is based on the 1 x sq rt 2 rectangle, much like a credit card, (or the golden ratio), which is very handy for some folding purposes, so I learned how to trim an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper into an A4 paper, (thank goodness for a paper trimmer though!)

This is a video of the boys throwing their planes, but it will make you dizzy! Apparently, throw the plane for video means throw it at mom. Oh well. We had a TON of fun making kites and planes and playing with them. A successful time experimenting with flight was had.

Now go look at all the other awesome participants projects!