Working Gliding Snitch

Hello. My name is Rikhav and I am in 8th grade. I currently attend Thomas Grover Middle School. In this instructable, I will show you how to make a gliding snitch in this project. In this there are not really many instructions so instead I will explain how this works and the science behind this. I am going to also show a way with cardboard for people who do not have 3D printers.

3D printerx1

or

Cardboard sheet(white)x1

Table tennis ballx1

Hot glue gun x1

In this step, all that you need to do is 3D print the snitch by downloading the file below and then following the instructions specified for your 3D printer.

In this step, all you need to do is cut two strips of cardboard the width of the ball and then hot glue it to the ball pointed slightly upwards. Then if you want, you can make some textured bumps on the ball using the hot glue. Then if wanted you could paint the ball but since the ping pong ball was already orange like the golden snitch I did not.

Now that you have your glider we will talk about how it works. 3 main forces are working on the glider: drag(which is mainly negligible for this project), lift(which is given by you when you throw it), and weight(which we try to minimize its effects by making wings with a large area and a low width that reduces weight). By trying to increase the lift and reduce weight and drag we can make the glider go farther. (I used a paper airplane photo because it is more clear.)

The wings of a glider put higher pressure on the bottom of the wings and lower pressure on the top of the wings. As long as the glider is moving fast enough the wings will continue to generate lift, however, when the speed that is given by your arm when it is thrown is all used up then the speed drops and so does the lift. When the lift becomes less than the weight then the snitch drops to the ground.

To fly it all you need to do is thow it. Sometimes throwing it at an upwards angle helps it fly farther. I got it to fly almost 20 meters. If it spins sometimes that is okay. It happens to mine too. I hope that any Harry Potter fans who make it feel the magic of science. This concludes my instructable. I hope that you enjoyed making the project. Thank you for reading!