Studying Flight at the Morehead Planetarium & Science Center

A few weeks ago my son heard about a special event called “Take Flight” being held at the Morehead Planetarium & Science Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  The event was described as having scientists on hand to answer questions and stations where you could perform your own experiments and was in celebration of their new show by the same name.

Do your own science experiments!  That totally caught My Little Man’s attention, and he asked earnestly to go.

Why say ‘no’ to a kid asking to do science?

We went.

The first stations we found were on the lawn outside.  UNC students were manning stations with different tools to create flight.  We spent the most time at this one, where you could try to fly different objects.  These heavy foam planes flew really well.

My big Helper preferred this thing that looked like a dowel with high wings.  I have no idea what it was called, but she figured out how to make it fly well and spent lots of time seeing how high and far she could make it go.  It was a really neat gadget!

DH got into this, too, and pretty soon they were all finding ways to make the flying objects go further.

There were other things, too – kites and huge foam planes and Frisbees – but these were our favs.

When we headed inside we found many more stations for experimentation: a chemical station to change bouncy balls into flying objects, another where you could study the wing action of a certain moth, building stations with Legos, paper airplane construction sites, and rocket balloons.  We wanted to do all of these, but our time was short, and so we headed into the Science Stage room to be sure we got seats, and it’s a good thing we did – every seat was full long before the show began!

The Science Stage shows at the Morehead Planetarium are great.  The ones we’ve seen have all been taught by UNC science students, and they’ve done an excellent job of teaching scientific principles in fun ways.  The Take Flight show was no different.

Our teacher taught about the four principles of flight (weight, lift, drag, and thrust) and performed simple experiments to demonstrate each one.  By the time we left, I felt as if we had really learned something – and no textbook was needed.

That was the perfect set-up for our next activity.  We went to the GlaxoSmithKline Full Dome theater to see the new show Take Flight for ourselves.  It was very quirky in style and admittedly not my favorite show there, but it emphasized the four principles of flight well.  Also featured was information about the history of flight and ideas about what kind of flight innovations might be coming in the future.

By the time the included star show had ended, the Take Flight event was nearly over, too.  The kids were sad to leave but excited to come home and try to improve the flight of their kites, planes, and Frisbees.

Attending the event was well worth it, and the Morehead Planetarium holds many such events throughout the year.  I’ll definitely be watching the calendar for the next one.

Are their local science centers or museums that might hold great learning events suitable for your family?

Want to know more about flight?  Check out these great resources!

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A Little R & R