Exploring Lift and Drag: A Women in STEM Day Celebration

The Girls in STEM Club kicked off another exciting year at the Discovery Science and Technology Centre by celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11 February) with a hands-on exploration of aerodynamics. 

Using a wind tunnel, the girls investigated how different recyclable materials behaved in moving air.  Would they fly, hover, stick, or sink?  By observing how air speed and surface area affected lift and drag, they sorted materials into “flying” and “non-flying” categories, thinking like real aerospace engineers.

Next came the design challenge: create an object that could remain airborne in the wind tunnel for one full minute.  Working in pairs they built balloon-like designs, tested, and refined their flying objects.  When the timer hit 60 seconds, the girls erupted in cheers!

The experiment then leveled up.  Could their creations survive low, medium, and high wind speeds?  The girls adjusted weight, shape, and surface area to balance lift and stability across all three settings, discovering that even small design changes can dramatically affect flight performance.

For the final challenge, they aimed for the ceiling.  Using their knowledge from earlier tests, they selected the lightest material, cellophane, to create tiny confetti-like flyers.  While these soared impressively high, they did not quite reach the ceiling.

Alissa then revealed why soap bubbles will succeed: their spherical shape evenly distributes air pressure, their extremely low mass reduces gravity’s pull, and their large surface area maximizes lift.  When bubbles floated all the way to the ceiling, the girls burst into laughter, cheers, and applause and that’s science in action!