It’s not every day that students get to windsurf in class. However, in Aerospace Engineering, a class new to MHS this year, students had the opportunity to see what windsurfing would really be like.
“We study many different aspects of engineering,” Steve Selle, Aerospace Engineering teacher, said.
The course teaches the history of flight, the structure of the plane and how all the parts work.
Recently, the class has been studying airfoil design.
“Airfoil design is a wing in profile,” Selle said. “Students pick different airfoils to achieve different amounts of lift.”
To help the students grasp this concept, Selle’s classes went outside and experienced the force of the horizontal lift of a wind sail, which is used in windsurfing.
Selle said he waited for a day when the weather was very windy so students could see how the wind affected the sail.
“It was really an application of aerospace engineering,” Selle said.
In preparation for this activity, the class watched videos on how wind sails work, and how to hold them for more or less power, Jacob Swim, senior, said.
“It was lots of fun,” Swim said. “I almost got knocked down on my butt.”
Sam Spencer, senior, also participated in this activity and said it was a fun and effective way of learning.
“I want to learn to windsurf [now],” Spencer said.
Swim said the class as a whole was very hands-on. Aerospace Engineering, part of Project Lead the Way, is a weighted grade practical art class.
“We basically start with the history and the Wright Brothers and go through space,” Selle said.
In addition to learning about planes, the course covers gliders and how they’re built. Selle’s classes have entered a competition sponsored by Boeing Airplane Company to see which team can design a glider that can travel the farthest.
Next, the class studies the dynamic of rockets and learns about transportation into outer space.
Eventually, the students will build a robot called “Bobot,” that can sense the area around it and move accordingly. For their final, Bobot will have to be programmed to complete a maze on its own, without being directed by a remote control or by any other means.
“I would definitely recommend this class to my friends,” Spencer said.
