Recently the Junior aerospace STEM students went on a trip to i-Fly, a local indoor skydiving locale. However, many non-STEM students have been wondering, what exactly was the point of the trip?
In an interview with Peter Mortensen ‘24, I found out what happened on the trip and just how useful it was.
Upon their arrival at i-Fly, the students were reminded of the basic forces of flight, as well as what makes something aerodynamic. With these things in mind, they were introduced to the wind tunnel, in which they would be “flying,” and the basics of how to fly in the tunnel (what hand signals to use, how they should orient their body, how to use the equipment, etc.).
Each student had two opportunities to fly. The first was low to the ground, getting the hang of being able to hover and turn slowly, and the second flight was a higher flight up to 15 feet into the air with more complicated body movements.
After that, they were given a demonstration of how different objects with varying proportions react to being in the wind tunnel, specifically how they moved and how their terminal velocities would vary.
So it is fairly obvious that the wind tunnel relates to topics in the classroom (such as basic flight and terminal velocity), but was there anything that was different from what they could learn in school as opposed to inside of a wind tunnel?

The answer is yes, as this experience gave the students the opportunity to have hands-on experience with some of the ideas they had been discussing in class, specifically airfoils, and allowed for them to have a physical demonstration of the topics that had just been ideas in the classroom. To quote Chris Patiag ‘24, “The immersion we were offered at i-Fly was a whole other experience compared to what we do in class.”

There seems to be a very positive reaction to the trip, so any freshman or sophomore STEM students interested in aerospace better buckle up and get ready to head to i-Fly, because it seems like it’s here to stay!