Today we got the chance to visit inHolland University’s Delft campus. Located here is the university of applied sciences. This is where you would be located if you choose to study aeronautical engineering. I was not aware of this and when I found out my day just got 1000% times better. I always had a great interest in aviation and this entire college is based on aviation. Everything we learned about today was very interesting to me and I wish we could have stayed longer. They offer other programs and types of engineering but they are located at other inHolland locations. It started with a presentation about the school and how the aeronautical engineering program works. The way they do it is pretty neat since not only are you placed in physical classrooms for your standard classes but you hit the ground running with hands-on projects. In your second year you start learning about airplanes and constructing them and by the end of the school year you end up building one yourself that is remote controlled and can perform certain tasks. Like our tour guide, who was a student, showed an airplane where there was a compartment that carried water balloons, and was done to complete the task of putting out a fire.

We got a cool tour of some of their facilities and got to learn about the satellite they want to send into orbit. Their satellite is about twice the size of a shoe box. We learned that it would get them 2 million Euros to send it into space. An important part of the satellite is the drag chute. It is something they want to improve and potentially be able to sell to other companies. A big factor they have to account for is the extreme temperature changes. In space the satellite would either be in direct sunlight or in complete darkness. The entire satellite and the mechanism of the chute has to work after facing these extreme temperature changes. Additionally they had an entire flight simulator for a Boeing 737-800 which was fascinating since it was something that the students maintained and learned on. It could be used to practice flight, and mimic emergency scenarios when having to leave the campus building.

Our last event was the glider challenge which was great fun and in my opinion a robbery (We placed second place in the competition by 0.5 points). We were given a template and a foam board the size of an A4 piece of paper. In the end we would get three tries to get the plane to fly the farthest and straightest. Additionally we got washers, paper clips, and tape to put together the best plane. I was super excited to do this challenge. I knew that our main goal was to get the center of gravity right under the front edge of the wing. According to the instructions it should be in the first 25% area but the wing was partially round on the edges so it was more of an educated guess. After our first trial with a single weight and a couple paper clips we noticed the plane would fly straight based on our design and adding more weight would give the plane more momentum. I added two washers on top of the wing and made sure it was aligned with the center of gravity so it stayed in the same area. We saw very good improvements but for our final try we added two weights on the nose so that it was balanced and we got excellent results. At first it started unstable but at the end it stabilized and flew straight. This completely destroyed the noise of the plane and our traditional repair with a piece of cardboard, glue and tape was not enough. I noticed the foam board had three layers. Two are like layers sandwiching a thicker foam like layer. I straightened out a paper clip and forced it in the direction of the nose from the underside. This tremendously increased the strength of the noise. Although we finished trials I felt it was a clever innovation. 

After the college tour we were treated to shakes called freakshakes. They were good but too much sugar for me. This was followed by a canal tour of Delft which was pretty interesting. I had an extreme amount of fun making these gliders and I am excited for tomorrow since we get to visit the Delta Works. See ya then.