Hey it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So in fifth grade I used to make paper airplanes
with my best friend Tim. Now we took two different approaches.
You see I would read books and try to figure out the best way to make a paper airplane based on
other people's experience, and Tim would take the time and build them himself.
Now, the results were pretty interesting. Tim was always better than I was.
Now I chalk that up to the fact that I believe I had a knowledge of how to build
paper airplanes but Tim actually had an understanding of it. So today,
I'm gonna take you to Germany. I've found an academic club there that not only focuses
on the knowledge of how these things work, but they actually put it into practice and gain
an understanding. So today we're gonna start a two part video series. First of all I'm gonna
show you how to launch a glider, and then in a later video I'm gonna show you what it's like
in the cockpit with us. I'm Destin, let's get Smarter Every Day.
[music]
(Destin) The wings are taped on huh? - Yep.
It gets pretty noisy if you don't tape it, and it helps
for the airflow.
- OK so gliding in a huge game of balancing your energy. You go from kinetic
energy to potential energy and back and forth again. - OK?
[music]
OK there's two ways to get potential energy into the system. The first one
is an airplane, and the second way is a winch, and
Katarina? Katarina is operating the winch.
OK this is absolute genious. You pull the glider
from way down there..
with this winch. [German voice on radio]
[Large diesel engine starting]
[Engine slowly revving up]
(Destin) Oh. Oooh wow. Oh are you serious?
That is amazing.
[rushing air] [cockpit warning beeps]
[levers being pulled]
[engine running]
So she's pulling the rope in as it
falls with a parachute so there's no slack.
[engine stops] (Destin) Perfect.
- No, [unintelligible] - You're very good at this.
Ya?
- Um. This is on the plane, and then when now it starts
this and when the winkel? - Yeah Yeah.
- Then it falls out automatically.
- And then that makes the parachute operate. - Yeah,
and the parachute is that it doesn't fall that fast.
- Your job is very important. - Yeah, of course. [laugh]
Otherwise the sailplanes cannot start. - Yeah.
So, when I outfitted the gliders with different camera views the point was to learn.
So these are all students and we're looking at all the different videos to make sure we
did everything correctly. And they're trying to learn what they did wrong, what they can
do better next time, playing with efficiencies and drag and things like that. So it's
really fun. Anyway, you're getting Smarter Every Day. Please subscribe.
(together) Welcome to Germany. We're getting Smarter Every Day.
(Destin) And we're going to a disco party in our glider. [laugh]
Is it really tradition to wear a hat like this or are you guys just making fun of me?
OK if you want more information about gliders in Germany
you need to talk to this lady, Florentina, here in Germany,
so how can we contact you? What's your group name? - You could contact us on our home page.
It's the academic gliding group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
- This is now the black forest.
(Destin) You made it smaller.
Ein, zwei, drei!
[laugh]
It's in the tree!
[ Captions by Andrew Jackson ] captionsbyandrew.wordpress.com
Captioning in different languages welcome. Please contact Destin if you can help.