POWERUP Powered Paper Airplane Challenge Winners!

Congrats, Powered Paper Airplane Challenge Winners!

We are so excited to announce the winners of our first-ever Powered Paper Airplane Challenge! These educators and their students used their creativity, problem-solving skills, and knowledge of aeronautics to create powered paper airplanes that seemed to defy gravity!

The winners are…….

• First Place – Mike Benson’s 6th Grade science class from Our Lady of Grace in Edina, Minn.

• Second Place – Suzanne Schedin’s 5th grade class from Herold Pond Elementary School in Milford, N.H.

• Third Place – Wendy Holland’s 4th Grade science class from Boone Grove Elementary School in Boone Grove, Ind.

The first-place winner received two  POWERUP X FPV app-controlled video-streaming airplane motors, the second-place winner received two POWERUP 3.0 app-controlled paper airplane motors, and the third place winner received two POWERUP DART aerobatic app-controlled paper airplane motors.

To participate in the Challenge, students learned about aeronautics, designed and folded paper airplanes, and tested out their designs using the battery powered POWERUP 2.0 Free Flight motor. Many students had a bumpy first flight with the  POWERUP 2.0 Free Flight. To fix this, they identified which flight phenomena they experienced and determined what caused their paper airplane to crash. Was it a wing stall, a nose dive, or spiral dive? Did their plane fly upside down? Did it bank left or right? Knowing what went wrong helped students understand their design flaws and tweak their designs.

This trial-and-error method is what STEM and the scientific method is all about. It’s seeing if a hypothesis, or in this case, a design, was right – all in real-time. We wanted the Challenge to be a learning experience that felt more like fun and less like learning. The video submissions were full of smiles, laughter, and excitement. We think we achieved our goal!