Building Planes and Memories

Tyler had to construct a balsa wood plane from a kit for his college physics course. He and Ron spent the past week working on that. Of course, in usual Tyler fashion, he procrastinated until the last possible second to start it, so their goal was simply to finish it and not to make it look pretty. The plane was "guaranteed to fly as long as the directions are followed". The plane was too delicate to try flying before class, so it was anyone's guess as to if it would really fly or not. Tyler said his grade was dependent on whether or not it actually flied, but we weren't sure if the professor was joking (or Tyler was exaggerating).

 

 

They flew the planes in class on Friday. They went into the mezzanine in the gym, wound the rubberbands, and tossed the planes across the gym. They could try multiples times, but not all the planes survived the first flight to try again. Some planes went straight down and crashed, some didn't. Tyler ended up trying to fly his plane 6 times. On his 6th attempt it went 62', which put him in 2nd place. (The video is posted on FB.) The winning plane flew 69'. He ended up getting 100% on the plane and a bonus for winning 2nd place. I think Tyler & Ron were pleased with their accomplishment.

Personally, I enjoyed listening to the boys work together. Tyler is at the age where he's positive he's smarter than us, so I wasn't sure he would listen to Ron's advice. Sometimes Ron is a little bristly about that, so sometimes he doesn't listen to Tyler. None of that was a problem, though. They joked around and laughed and for the most part really seemed to enjoy working together, and Tyler was genuinely thankful for Ron's help. I think it ended up being a good experience for everyone.

Interestingly, Facebook reminded me that during this same week 10 years ago, the boys were working together on another project. That was a pretty good experience, too.

I'm so thankful Tyler and Danielle have Ron for their dad. They don't realize how lucky they are...which is exactly as it should be at this point in their lives.