>> Major funding for Design Squad Nation is provided by: >> The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Series funding is provided in part by NASA-- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

>> Northrop Grumman Foundation, supporting innovative education experiences for students and educators.

>> And the Lemelson Foundation.

The Foundation sparks, sustains, and celebrates innovation and the inventive spirit in the U.S. and developing countries.

Additional funding is provided by: United Engineering Foundation... >> ...Motorola Foundation.... >> ...and IEEE.

>> I'm Judy.

>> And I'm Adam.

We're engineers.

>> We work with kids... >> This is so cool!

>> ...to make their dreams come true through engineering.

>> ( speaking in Spanish ) >> If you can dream it, you can build it.

>> I never really thought I could do something like this.

>> That was really fun.

( laughing ) >> On Design Squad Nation.

>> I'm Felipe, and I live in Miami, Florida.

There's many things I like about Miami.

For example, the weather here is fantastic year long.

I mean, look at this beach.

It's great.

Also you have people from all over the world that come here.

But I've got to be honest with you-- this is not really where I like to hang out.

I like to hang out somewhere else.

I started flying when I was 13, almost 14.

I would go over to Miami International, and I would be talking to the controllers, like, if I was, you know, a normal pilot.

And I would just think to myself, "Did you guys know you have a 14-year-old flying over Miami International?

I'm pretty sure they'd be freaked out if they did.

This is the one I basically started training in.

My first flight was in a Cessna 172.

Then we came out on this taxiway right here.

I got nervous about, like, right there.

That little thing, I just got nervous.

I was like, "Okay, what am I doing?

I'm on a plane."

But then, you know, we were doing so many things that it just went off my mind, and then we just aligned with the runway, and we went full throttle, and I was, like, "Wow."

You know, you feel empowered when you go full throttle.

>> Runway nine, right straight up with the takeoff.

You're coming up.

You're open.

>> I used to live over there, and I had my chickens in the backyard.

And I would go out with them, and I would see the planes practicing the traffic pattern.

And I would look up, and it would be like, "Hey, you know, someday I want to be in those planes.

I want to know how to fly them."

My most memorable flight was when we went to Haiti.

When I got on the plane and I took off, I was like, "Okay, what am I doing?

I'm going to Haiti, you know, they just had an earthquake."

But I was like, "Okay, it's for a good cause, and I'm going to get the experience of doing this, so..." And you look down, and all you see is water, water, water, water.

The flight was about 15 hours.

And we took cargo and water and some people, too.

I mean, I'm never going to forget that flight.

I don't know what I would do if they told me I can't fly anymore.

Like, I don't know what else I would do in my life.

Airplanes are like... they're part of me.

They're a little part of my heart, the airplanes.

I've got to be with an airplane.

I feel myself more mature than other kids out there, because, you know, okay, now you're not playing around with a little toy.

Now you're flying an airplane that can cause a lot of damage if you don't use it properly.

So it makes you more mature, and it just gives you a lot of confidence.

Whoa!

Whoa!

Whoa!

Oh, my!

>> I should have seen that coming.

>> Whoa!

Oh!

Oh, wow.

Look at all this water.

I think we have the best view of Miami here.

>> Right now on your right, where the beach starts to widen up, that's South Beach right there.

That's, like, one of our famous beaches out here.

It's pretty, that's for sure.

>> Is that your favorite beach?

>> Yep.

And we're going to have Seaworld on the left hand side here.

I'm going to show you where Shamu is.

All right, there's some dolphins in there.

>> Oh, there's dolphins!

>> I totally see the dolphins.

>> There she is.

She's right in behind you.

>> Shamu!

She's waving her flipper at us.

>> She's waving.

She's saying, "Hey, Judy."

>> Felipe, thanks so much.

This has been an amazing, amazing flight.

Such a cool experience.

>> Beautiful.

>> I'm glad you guys enjoyed it.

>> Well, we've got a flight we think you might enjoy.

>> And what is that about?

>> Have you ever heard of the Flugtag?

>> Yes, I have heard about it.

It's pretty fun.

>> Flugtag is all about people who build these human-powered flying machines and then push them off a dock that's 30 feet in the air.

>> Well, we are doing it, and we need some help.

>> Oh, I wouldn't mind doing it.

>> We need someone who knows a thing or two about flying.

>> I think I can help you guys with that.

>> I think you're our guy, yeah.

>> I think you're our man, yeah.

>> We can talk about it a little more when we land, all right?

>> All right, we'll talk about it.

>> Oh, what are you doing to us?

>> There it goes again.

>> Oh!

>> Oh, who needs roller coasters?

This is great.

>> Yeah!

So beautiful.

>> Let's check out the Flugtag.

>> Oh, here we go.

Looks like there's a couple rules.

Total wingspan can't be more than 30 feet wide.

Weight including the aircraft and the pilot no more than 450 pounds.

>> It's five people, right?

So we need the team, too.

>> Oh, okay.

>> Oh!

>> So I'm going to help you guys design this, right?

>> We hope so, yeah.

>> But then I have a question.

>> Okay.

>> You guys are building it in Boston.

How are we bringing it down here to Miami?

>> That's a really great question.

I've been thinking about this for a while.

You know who does exactly what we're going to be doing?

NASA.

If you think about it, they build these giant aircrafts that are actually going from land to outer space.

And they build it in one location, transport it hundreds of miles to another, and then reassemble before the launch.

Oh, this one's really cool.

Check this out.

>> The LCROSS?

What does that stand for?

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

>> This is really cool.

This is NASA's, like, big, big satellite project that was looking for water on the moon.

So they actually launched this thing to go into space to try to find water, right?

Which is, if you think about it, really kind of funny, right?

Because we're going to come down to Flugtag, definitely we are going to crash into the water.

>> We're going to find water.

>> There's no way around it.

>> We're definitely going to find water.

Can that be our inspiration?

>> I think it's pretty good.

I mean, it relates a lot to what we're doing.

>> Right.

>> Water and water.

So you guys are going back to Boston.

What should I do now to help you guys?

>> Well, I think what we'll do is we'll go back, drop some sketches, and then send them over to you.

And we'll continue, like, conversations through Skype.

>> All right, I'll look at your diagrams, and I'll give you ideas on how to improve it.

>> Well, since you're the pro in flight here, we would love your input on this.

>> We will need your help on this.

I would love to.

It's a very good idea.

>> Here's a picture of the satellite.

You can easily see something like this translate into something like that, right?

Like, the big glider wing in front becomes the pedals right there.

>> So our glider for Flugtag is going to look something like this.

So this is the leading edge of the wing.

And the wing will have this cool airfoil shape.

And the spar-- that supports the wing-- will extend the entire length of the wing.

So all along the back of the wing we'll have the trailing edge.

And I'll just draw a section of that here.

So this is the main body, or the fuselage of the plane.

And in the front we'll definitely have some kind of a nose cone.

And that is our Flugtag glider.

>> Hi, Judy, hi, Adam.

How's it going?

Just checking on your design.

How's everything going?

>> Hey, Felipe.

>> Hey, Felipe.

It's going well.

>> So yeah, we've been thinking about our design.

In fact, we have one ready to go.

>> Oh, I think that looks pretty cool.

I love how you picked that design for the wings.

The fuselage looks nice.

Where will the pilot go?

>> The pilot is going to go right on top, right above the fuselage, kind of centered over the wings.

>> I have a question-- what type of materials did you guys use?

>> We're trying our best to use really lightweight aircraft grade aluminum, carbon fiber, and foam.

>> That's what I hear a lot.

I hear that those are the lightest, the most strongest materials that we use now to build our aircraft.

And I have another question.

What is the wingspan that you guys chose?

I've seen a lot of gliders, and they usually have long, long wingspan.

What did you guys go around there?

>> There's a 30-foot limit for the competition.

So we picked a wingspan that's 29 and a half feet.

We really kicked it all the way to the very limit.

>> That's pretty good.

Any questions for me?

>> Actually, yeah.

As an experienced pilot, do you have any tips for us at all?

>> You want to keep those surfaces as smooth as possible.

The smoother they are, the less resistance, and the less drag.

>> Well, I think that's enough to get us started.

Thanks so much.

>> All right, and I'll be checking in on you guys.

>> Okay.

>> All right.

>> See you.

>> See you soon.

>> We only get one shot-- one shot at Flugtag.

So we need to make sure this is right, this is dead-on.

>> We need a prototype.

>> I think we should.

Maybe what I'll do is start on the profile.

>> Okay, the airfoils?

>> I'll work on that.

So when I first heard about Flugtag, I was super, super excited.

The world record right now is about 150 feet.

So I think we're going to shoot for that one, and I have confidence we're going to do it.

>> So now that Judy cut our template out, she is tracing in the insulation foam the shape of the airfoils.

So we're going to make 20 of these, and these are going to define the shape of the wing.

>> The nice thing about this pink stuff is that you can find it at your local hardware store.

This is stuff that they actually use inside your home, like inside your walls for insulation.

It's super lightweight.

You can see how light it is.

What are you going to work on?

>> I'm going to make the fuselage.

And then I'll make the wing spar.

That's just a big aluminum rod.

I made these fuselage cutouts here.

These are going to be three of these, and they're going to be stacked like this.

And that is going to be what the rider sits on.

So I'm going to be lying down on that.

Since neither Judy or I has experience in building an airplane, we wanted to approach this challenge cautiously, at scale.

We wanted to make a prototype, because that's how we design and how we build.

So we tackled the challenge of making a quarter-scale prototype.

I just finished cutting out the fuselage pieces.

There's three of them.

And I'm going to cut the metal now for the fuselage, and then for the wing, and then for the tail right there.

It's aluminum.

It's pretty light.

Check that out.

Hot glue is the aerospace industry's best friend.

The fuselage is all done.

It looks pretty burly, right?

It's a lot of metal.

But this is aluminum.

This is thin walled aluminum tubing.

It's actually pretty light.

>> For this prototype that we're building, the wingspan is pretty small.

Like, we're only talking about seven feet.

So we need to make sure we have enough of these struts in between.

This is basically going to give it more rigidity.

>> So that is our angle of attack.

A little bit of a slant to get some good lift out of it.

Oh, yeah, that's good.

That's solid.

So I was a little worried that was going to want to twist, but with this piece glued to the fuselage, and then some tape on that, we'll do really nice.

>> Adam just found something for the nose cone.

It's pretty cool.

Check it out.

>> Yeah, it's pretty darn perfect, I think.

I'm going to chop it in half and stick it on the front of the plane.

There it goes.

Whoo!

I'm going to make a nose cone out of one half, and a tail cone right here out of the other half.

Nice.

>> Guess what we have!

>> We put the finishing touches on our prototype.

It looks like a plane.

>> I love this idea.

With the small prototype, what we could actually do is take it to the MIT wind tunnel.

So I'm cutting up some string, some yarn.

And we're going to glue it onto our prototype, so when we take it to the wind tunnel we can actually see how the air is flowing over the wing.

I'm giving our plane hair.

>> Oh, a crash landing!

>> Let's go.

Hey, let's take it over to the wind tunnel.

>> Okay.

So that's just like we're going to put it together down in Florida.

>> Watch the hair.

>> It's going to generate so much lift, we want to make sure it's held on there nice and tight.

>> All right, so... >> Ready to fly.

>> We've got it mounted.

>> Yeah.

>> Let's put some smoke in here so we can see where the air is actually going to... >> So that'll be like a smoke screen coming in from the front, and then flying over the wing.

>> We're going to turn on the fan.

>> We're going to have air coming over the wing at 15 miles an hour.

>> And that's pretty good, right?

Because that's probably about as fast as our team can run.

Here's what the wind tunnel test will tell us.

When air moves over our glider wing, it creates an upward force called lift, which keeps our glider in the air.

Air moving over the wing also pushes against it, creating a backwards force called drag, which slows our glider down.

The angle of the wing moving through the air is called the angle of attack.

Increasing the angle of attack increases the amount of lift and the amount of drag from the wing.

If we can find the amount of lift and drag at different angles of attack and then divide lift by drag, we'll find the best combination of more lift and less drag that will make our glider fly as far as possible.

But we have to be careful.

If the angle of attack gets too big, the lift actually gets smaller, and the drag gets much larger, causing the plane to stall or lose altitude.

>> Hopefully we're going to see all of these yarns that look kind of random now line up with the air flow.

When we went to the wind tunnel we confirmed that our design generates lift.

That was huge.

You know, we were concerned that we would just go off the pier and sink into the water.

And we learned a lot about the angles that the wings go at, where we can get the most lift without being at risk of stalling.

So it was great.

You ready?

Let's go throw our prototype off the roof.

>> Okay.

>> Oh, it weighs a ton.

I feel the wind, though.

>> Can you feel it?

>> It wants to take it.

>> Okay.

Five, four, three, two, one, liftoff.

Yeah!

>> Oh, no!

Devastating.

>> But did you see how far it went?

It was, like, a nice coast, right?

>> Yeah, we got some distance.

>> Oh, man!

>> Should we go build the big one?

>> I think so, yeah.

>> What I've got here is a cross section of the wing.

And what's going to happen is, imagine this 15-foot length of wing.

So what I have to do is cut out 20 of these for the airfoil.

I've got a lot of pink foam to cut.

>> So Judy cut out this big stack of foam airfoils.

I'm going to start cutting the holes in the airfoils, so we can put those aluminum bars through them.

>> 18 more to go?

>> Lots to go.

>> All right.

>> We're halfway there.

Looks pretty good.

>> Did you make a bracelet?

>> I did.

>> It's so pretty.

Yeah, it looks so good on you.

>> Yeah.

>> It's pink, it's your color.

The piece right here is the fuselage spar.

I've got to weld these joints here.

So it looks good.

I think we can start welding.

All right, that's it.

Judy, come check it out.

>> Look at that.

>> Oh, my goodness, that is light.

That's a beautiful fuselage.

I love it.

Straight as an arrow, too.

>> It's so light they don't need me.

This piece here, this is going to be the leading edge of the wing.

And what you'll see is rib, leading edge, rib, and then it repeats.

So what this is doing is when the wind hits it, it's going to provide a little bit more structure.

Because when the wind hits this front edge of the wing, that's where it's taking the most force in.

71 more to go!

So I've got out 72 of these.

72-- that means a lot of pink foam going around.

Progress is going pretty well.

We've actually, you know, learned quite a bit for people who know nothing about building gliders.

We've actually learned quite a bit.

We've got the airfoils attached to the spar.

And now what we're doing is finishing up the leading edge.

What we're trying to do is make sure the spacing is equal.

>> The hot glue melts the foam a little bit, but as long as you don't put too much on the joint it gives you a pretty nice solid bond.

>> The prototype went really smooth, really well.

The bigger full-on scale model has been pretty cool.

The details become much, much more important.

Last one for this wing.

>> Nice.

Ah, I just love our wing.

What can I say?

>> Yeah, look at it.

It's huge.

Let's take a look at this.

I've just finished sanding this wing, and look how smooth it is, all the way down.

>> Judy, that's awesome.

This thing looks... this is smooth as butter.

>> Yeah, one more wing to go.

>> Just like Felipe said, make it... make it smooth.

>> Every flight is different.

Weather changes all the time.

Weather's not going to be the same.

The winds change all the time, so they're not going to be the same.

You always have a different scenario every time you go flying.

But, you know, gliders, gliders are tricky.

You don't have an engine.

Now you can't put it into full throttle and go around and try it again.

You have one shot.

I just can't wait to see that thing just glide once we push it off the pier.

I just...

I can't wait for it to just glide.

>> What I wanted was the stiffest, lightest thing I could find.

It's going to be the frame for our fuselage, and carbon fiber is exactly that-- super, super stiff and super, super light.

Really, really, really hard to break.

Do we want to put the fuselage together really quick?

Let's put the aluminum braces in right now.

This whole panel is lighter than the plywood we used on the prototype, which was a quarter of the scale of this.

Not only that, it's probably way stronger than that.

>> Yeah, it's amazing stuff.

>> So we're starting to skin the wing right now with this polyester film.

It's like seeing water.

Yike!

And the reason we used it is because it's super, super strong, and pretty lightweight.

In fact, they use it for a lot of aircraft.

It's not like paper.

This whole thing is plastic.

All right, I'm going to pull up, and you're going to pull flat.

Look at that.

It's like a perfect reflection.

Look at the camera.

>> Hey, Judy.

This is it, Judy.

I'm pretty excited.

A little more to your left.

>> Whoo!

>> Oh, yes!

>> Look at that.

Careful with the lights.

We should figure out a way to weigh it.

>> All right, so you're going to step on that scale?

>> Adam is... oh, this is embarrassing on television.

172 pounds.

Adam plus plane is 230.

It's under 60 pounds.

>> That's pretty good.

>> Wow, that's really light.

I think that we have a very good chance of winning this competition.

>> There's a lot of places where it could go wrong, and, you know, we get one shot at it, and if it doesn't go right, then, well... >> I would be pretty embarrassed...

I would feel really embarrassed to go straight into the water.

We're totally in this competition to win it.

>> It's going to be like this.

I didn't think it would be this big.

This is cr >> Major funding for Design Squad Nation is provided by: >> The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Series funding is provided in part by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

>> Northrop Grumman Foundation, supporting innovative education experiences for students and educators.

>> And the Lemelson Foundation.

The Foundation sparks, sustains, and celebrates innovation and the inventive spirit in the U.S. and developing countries.

Additional funding is provided by: United Engineering Foundation.

>> Motorola Foundation.

>> And IEEE.

>> Hey, Adam, check this out.

It's the Design Squad Nation Web site.

You can play games on it.

>> Whoa, sweet!

Hey, look at this.

You can watch videos from the show and you can sketch your own new designs.

>> And there's a ton of amazing designs on here from kids at home.

This bike gets an extra speed with wind power.

>> Here's a combination of a scooter and a kite.

>> And here's a remote control plane that looks like an eagle.

>> So join Design Squad Nation at pbskidsgo.org.