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Hi, there! Squeaks and I are so excited.
We’ve been learning about Ingenuity,
a special machine that scientists at NASA put on Mars.
NASA has put a few different machines called rovers on Mars before.
A rover is a kind of vehicle that’s made to drive on a different world.
And the ones on Mars have been driving all over the ground to explore,
take pictures, and send information back to Earth.
But, Ingenuity works a bit differently, because it doesn’t drive…
it’s the first machine built to fly around the surface of Mars!
You’re right, Squeaks!
Flying gives scientists a totally different way of looking at the planet.
And since Ingenuity worked so well,
space engineers will probably build more flying machines to explore Mars.
Oh, of course!
I’d be happy to answer your question about Ingenuity.
Great question!
A lot of the flying machines we have on Earth are airplanes.
But Ingenuity isn’t a plane… it’s a helicopter!
Helicopters fly a bit differently than planes, or even birds.
Exactly, both birds and planes use their wings to fly!
But helicopters do something different.
They have spinning blades on top which
act kind of like a giant fan to push the air and fly.
A helicopter’s blades are angled up just a bit, so as they spin,
they push the air down, which lets the helicopter go up!
Now, that all works great here on Earth.
But, there’s a big problem with flying anything around Mars:
there isn’t much air to push against!
The surface of Mars has way less air than the surface of Earth.
Other planets are all really different from Earth!
Earth is the only one that we know about that has lots of great air for us to breathe,
and for planes and helicopters to fly.
But Mars has other cool things,
like huge dust storms and mountains that are bigger than any mountain on Earth!
So engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had to work really hard to
design a helicopter that could fly on a planet that is so different from Earth.
They tried out lots of different designs.
That’s because problems can have lots of different solutions.
And engineers like to test different solutions to see which ones work best.
Like which helicopter design flies best, or is easiest to send all the way to Mars!
And they came up with Ingenuity!
One thing that makes it different from helicopters on Earth
is that it’s super light-weight!
So there’s less to lift up in the first place.
And it has really long blades that spin really, really fast,
to push what little air there is as much as possible!
It does sound like a fun project, doesn’t it?
Now that you mention it, I have a fun challenge
that can help us work and think like space engineers!
We can build a model helicopter.
We use models to help us understand or explain something about the world.
So a model helicopter could be a simple version
that shows us something about how real ones work!
You can build one, too!
All you’ll need are scissors, paper, a printed PDF template from NASA,
which we’ve linked in the description,
a stopwatch or clock to time your copter, and a grown-up helper.
First, we’ll cut along the dotted lines on this template.
Then, we’ll fold along the bolded lines here,
to make our own paper helicopter model.
Because it’s a model, it should work similarly to how a real helicopter works.
Now, a real helicopter like Ingenuity has an engine to spin its blades really,
really fast, so the helicopter can stay in the air.
Our model doesn’t have an engine,
but the paper blades will spin like real helicopter blades,
if we drop our model from up high,
like if a grown-up drops it from up on top of a stepladder or chair.
The spinning blades should push the air under the model,
and help slow down our model’s fall.
I want to make sure that this works, so let’s compare it to the same cut-out,
but with all of the blades pointing up, so they can’t push the air as well.
Alright, Squeaks, let’s drop these from up high, and see if the blades
help our model to stay in the air longer than the comparison cut-out.
Ok.
Here we go.
First one.
And, second one.
Woah, that worked pretty well!
What did you notice about our model, Squeaks?
Yeah, the model with the blades stretched out spun better,
and took longer to reach the ground.
This is a pretty good first design,
but I wonder if there’s something we could do to make our model stay up longer.
The engineers who built Ingenuity had to try many different designs
before they found the best one, so we can do the same with our model.
What ideas do you have, Squeaks?
Oh, we could try making a model with longer blades,
like the long blades Ingenuity has.
Maybe that would help our model to push more air!
We can even use our clock to help us time
how long each design we try is able to stay in the air.
We can test lots of changes to our design this way.
What other things could we try?
Ooo, good idea!
Ingenuity is lighter than other helicopters,
so maybe we can try a thinner kind of paper, like tissue paper!
And we could try heavier paper, too.
I was thinking we could try different angles for the blades,
to see which one catches the air the best.
You’re right Squeaks!
As good engineers, we’ll need to try lots of different designs to find the best one!
It does sound like a fun afternoon!
Let’s get testing.
And you can try out building your own helicopter model at home!
What ideas do you have for improving the design,
and helping your model to fall through the air really slowly?
If you’re able to try it out, Squeaks and I hope that
you enjoy getting to be an engineer for the day!
Remember, if you want to keep exploring and
experimenting with us at SciShow Kids, be sure to hit the subscribe button.
We’ll see you next time, here at the Fort.
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