Mac Laramee and Tyler Miller: Balsa Wood Helicopter

Our goal for this project was to design a helicopter that would remain airborne for as long as possible. We at first wanted to create a larger prototype that included a motor that would power the propeller and keep it in the air. However, when we realized that this design was flawed, we instead attempted a design that used lighter plastic pieces that used rubber bands and a rotating pulley system. When this design unfortunately failed, we used rubber bands and a larger propeller to power a smaller design constructed of balsa wood.

Our first design included a larger propeller with rotating rubber bands releasing potential energy to make the helicopter airborne. The design had a paper clip on the bottom of a piece of balsa wood that would hold the rubber bands, allowing for them to spin and the energy to be released. The propeller was on top, connected to the balsa wood. Unfortunately, the design did not work, as the rubber bands did not rotate enough to provide power for the prototype to stay in the air.

After the failure of our first design, we decided to create a prototype that would use more power to remain airborne. We thought that if we made a larger design to support it, a small engine and battery would be able to spin a small propeller fast enough to get the helicopter in the air. We attempted to make two large parallelogram-shaped pieces using balsa wood and hot glue so that the base of the design would be strong enough to support the heavy battery and engine. However, we soon realized that this design was simply too heavy to get in the air. Although the battery and engine provided a lot of power to the propeller, the weight of the design kept the prototype grounded.

The goal of our third design was to include the pieces that worked from our previous one but create a lighter prototype. The design used rubber bands rotated around a plastic pulley system with a plastic connecter being the base of the design. The design seemed ideal on paper, but we were unable to get the pulley system to work together to rotate the propellers. We also were unable to get the plastic pieces to connect to the balsa wood, which resulted in the design not working.

At this point, the goal of our fourth design was to get a prototype in the air. We created a design similar to some of our classmates', which used a single piece of balsa wood with a propeller on top to get the prototype airborne. The rubber bands were used as potential energy when they were rotated and attached to the bottom with a paper clip. The potential energy was turned to kinetic energy when the bands were released, which allowed the design to fly. A piece of construction paper was attached to the balsa wood and served as a wing, to help keep the design in the air. This design was by far the most successful of the four we created, as it allowed the helicopter to stay in the air for a short period.

Although many of our designs failed in remaining airborne, we realized that these failures are part of the Engineering Design Process and were necessary for our small success at the end of the project. If we did not fail initially, then our final design would not have been as well thought out, seeing as we were able to learn from the mistakes we made with our previous designs.