This summer I'm the Director of Air & Space Camp at Wings Over the Rockies, Colorado's official air & space museum. It's amazing. I'm paid to do things most ten year olds (and not a few grown-ups) would kill to do, up to and including shoot rockets and blow things up. I'm learning an extraordinary amount, about education and young creativity, and - of course - air & space.
One of the campers' projects is to create models of human-powered flight machines that they design themselves. We give a brief lesson that touches on renewable energy and the history of human flight (more da Vinci than Wright brothers on this one), and we show a couple of super cool videos.
The first video is of the AeroVelo Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter. This bike-chopper won the Sikorsky Prize, which was awarded for the attainment of one of the last remaining milestones in aviation: to create a flight machine powered entirely by the human body. The requirements were to build a human-powered helicopter that would reach a height of 10 meters off the ground, stay in the air for at least a minute, and hover with its center of gravity not leaving a 10-meter box. Check it out:
The second video shows the first successful flight of the world's first human-powered ornithopter [an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings], designed by students at the University of Toronto:
We ooh and ahh over the concept of humans flying using only--in these two cases--their leg muscles.
Then the kids get to work, with graph paper and pencils and an endless supply of recycled materials. You'd hardly believe what they come up with: from spring-loaded, stilt-based, jumping-powered ornithopters to combined pedal-and-bench-press-powered hot air balloons with dual air intake inspired by jet-engine mechanics. And one burrito-powered flatulence-copter. Because kids.
