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Pilots are life-long learners, and, per the Feynman Learning Technique, the best way to learn anything is to teach it to someone else. With that in mind, plus a desire to pass the torch to a new generation, some old pilots developed a week-long aviation camp for youth, ages 14-18.
Young Aviators got students interested in aviation and STEM.
Young Aviators ran for 12 years in Racine, Wisconsin. Each day, 12 students spent two hours in a fabrication hangar where they cut/folded/riveted a sheet of aluminum into a wing component. Two hours were allocated to flying. One was at the controls of an airplane alongside a CFI, and was preceded by flight planning and a preflight inspection. The participants also received a post flight debriefing. Another hour was flying a flight simulator where learning was easier without the flight deck noise and the need to look out for traffic. Finally, there were three hours in the classroom in which the students would learn physics, chemistry, navigation, physiology, and math used in aviation. As the curriculum chairman, I considered aviation to be just an appetizer. STEM was the main course.
Like Moses and the Ten Commandments, aviation is limited by 10 laws of physics and chemistry. The oldest is Archimedes’ Law. The Four Forces of Flight (Lift, Thrust, Drag & Gravity) obey Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. irplane controls work per the Lever Principle, and a wing’s airfoil shape increases lift via the Bernouilli Principle and Coanda Effect. Manned flight began in 1783 and Ben Franklin witnessed people fly in two different types of aircraft (that always amazed the kids). It appealed to me, a chemist, to learn that the Montgolfier hot air balloon got its lift in accordance with Charles’s Law, one of the ideal gas laws, and two weeks later Charles’s hydrogen balloon got its lift per Avogadro’s Law. Yes, it was the same Jacques Charles.
Charles’s Law (at constant pressure, the volume of an ideal gas is proportional to its absolute temperature) would not be published until 20 years later. While the Montgolfier brothers believed that smoke was the source of lift for their hot air balloon, Ben Franklin correctly described it as “air rarified by heat” in a letter he wrote after witnessing the flight. He was a leading scientist of the era.
Give a kid the chance to get his hands dirty.
Aside from fun, what did the kids get out of Young Aviators? The sense of accomplishment from fabricating the airplane part and knowing they could takeoff and land a plane could be life-changing. We still chuckle about the preemptory order from one 16 year old girl. “Quiet Dad, I am trying to land the plane.” Her father had been allowed to sit in the back seat on the last day and violated the sterile cockpit rule.
Kids gained an appreciation of STEM unlike anything learned in school. One mother told me, “Although he hates math, he really got into your homework assignment. But why did he have to know my weight?” The assignment was to determine the maximum amount of fuel for a cross-country flight with the family, and without going outside the airplane’s weight and balance envelope. It wasn’t homework—it was flight planning.
Navigation combines geometry with geography. The “Navigation by the Ancients” class started with the Battle of Midway in World War ll. While Midway may not sound ancient, “dead reckoning” by naval aviators flying from carriers that were maintaining radio silence differed from what Columbus did only in time and speed (i.e. five hours at 150 knots vs. five weeks at 5 knots). Dead reckoning uses speed, time, and direction.
Did “Shop class” appeal to girls? Yes, they loved it, and most did a better job than the boys. The kids learned that the precision required to fabricate airplane parts was on par with knee surgery.
Although several kids did go on to become pilots, that was not our measure of success. If they went on to take STEM classes or become ambassadors of STEM among their peers, we claimed success. Every scientist and engineer that I know can name the person who got him or her interested in that field when they were teenagers. Often, it was a slightly older teenager.
Students were selected in interviews with both the candidate and the parents, and availability of planes limited us to 12 students per year. Although the list price for Young Aviators was $795, it cost us over $3,000 per student. Tax deductible donations made up the difference, and no qualifying candidate was ever turned away because the family could not afford it.
Aging of the volunteers and the availability of planes eventually shut down Young Aviators. If you would like more information on the program, click on anything that says “Young Aviators” on my website: http://sean.dwyer.us You will even find the final test and the answers there. See how you would do.
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- Pilots are not smarter, they are just better prepared - May 17, 2023
What a great experience for the kids and the teachers. Thanks for describing it.
Feynman was The Man — and he would have made an excellent pilot.