Wright Brothers

National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Wright Brothers National Memorial Junior Flight Ranger Activity Book Welcome to Wright Brothers National Memorial! Complete the pages and activities for your age group and attend a ranger program to become a Junior Flight Ranger! Ages 6 and under: Pages 1-3. Ages 7-11: Pages 1-7. Ages 12 and up: Pages 1 & 5-14. What did you learn? If a ranger program is offered during your visit, attend the program and then draw or write one thing you learned from the program. Protecting Special Places Each item on the National Park Service arrowhead symbolizes something that the National Park Service was created to protect. The SEQUOIA TREE and BISON represent plants and wildlife. The MOUNTAIN and LAKE represent scenery and places for recreation. The shape of the ARROWHEAD represents culture, history, and archeology. What do you think is worth protecting? Use your imagination to design your own arrowhead filled with things you want to protect! 1 Kitty Hawk Bingo As you walk throughout the park, look for these items. When you see one, circle it. Find three in a row or all four corners to complete the activity. First Flight Plaque Monument Reproduction 1903 Flyer Reconstructed Hangar NPS Arrowhead A Bird Orville Wright American Flag Flight Marker 2 Let’s Go Camping Visit the reconstructed camp building and hangar from 1903. On the left is the hangar where the Wright Flyer was stored to protect it from the wind, sand, and harsh weather of the Outer Banks. On the right is a workshop and living quarters where Wilbur and Orville slept, made meals, and worked on their machines. Take a look inside the buildings, and imagine what it would have been like to stay here with Wilbur and Orville during their years in Kitty Hawk. Think of three items you would bring with you from home and explain why. 1. 2. 3. Bonus! What do you think camp life was like for Wilbur and Orville? Would you want to live in these same conditions, why or why not? 3 Parts of a Flyer Use the image and descriptions below to label the parts of the 1903 Wright Flyer. If you get stuck, look at the park brochure or visit the Flight Room to see a reproduction of the flyer. 1. _____ 2. ____ 3. _____ 5. ____ 4. _____ A. The rudder controls the yaw, or right and left movement, of the aircraft from the back of the flyer. B. Wilbur and Orville designed propellers for the back of their flyer to provide the thrust they needed to get into the air. They dismissed the idea of a propeller as an “air screw,” like a ship propeller, and instead saw it as a wing that rotates. C. The bracing wires enforce the separate parts of the flyer ensuring that the more fragile wooden parts would not easily break during flight. D. The wings, made of Muslin Cotton, were designed using the information Wilbur and Orville gathered from their extensive wind tunnel testing. E. The elevator controls the pitch. This helps the flyer go up or down during flight. 4 The Wright Timeline Wilbur and Orville visited the Outer Banks for a few years before their first flight. Create a timeline of Wilbur and Orville’s flying experiments by matching the letter of the following events with the years when they took place. Hint: Use the pictures of the flying machines below the dates to help you figure out what happened when. 1899 —— 1900 —— 1901 —— 1902 —— 1903 —— A. Wilbur and Orville tested their first glider in the strong winds of Kitty Hawk. B. On the morning of December 17, 1903 the Wright brothers made the first successful power driven flight in world history in their Wright Flyer. C. This glider was the first to use a moveable tail called a rudder. This allowed them to control the yaw (side to side motion) and perform a full turn. They tested it 1000 times! D. Wilbur and Orville first began their journey by testing a small kite in Dayton, Ohio. E. This was the second glider the Wright brothers built and it had many problems with lift and control. 5 Going the Distance Today, the historic location where Wilbur and Orville made the first flights is marked by the First Flight Boulder and Flight Line. The boulder marks where the first flight took off and the numbered stones of the flight line mark the distance of each flight. Take a walk along the path of the first four flights, and at each landing marker find the information you need to finish the chart below. Flight Distance Time Pilot #1 120 feet _________ ________ #2 _________ 12 seconds ________ #3 _________ _________ Orville #4 _________ 59 seconds ________ Now that you’ve found the times and distances of the flights, let’s talk about speed! Airspeed is the speed of an airplane in relation to the wind around it. You can find the airspeed by adding the ground speed and the speed of the wind together. The speed of the 1st flight over the ground was only 6.8 mph. However, Wilbur and Orville flew directly into a wind that was blowing at about 27 mph. What was their airspeed? ___________________________________________________ Remember: Ground Speed + Speed of the wind = Air Speed Bonus! Are you faster than the Wright Flyer? Have someone record your time. Sprint as fast as you can from the boulder to the first marker. Use your sprint time to find the difference from the time of the first flight. How much faster are you than the first flight? 6 ____________________________________ Monument to a Dream Finished in 1932, the Wright Brothers Monument on Kill Devil Hill was built to remember Wilbur and Orville Wright and all that they accomplished. The monument sits on a star base and the monument itself is designed to look like bird wings. At the top of the monument is a beacon that shines at night to light the way for aviators. Do you think this monument is fitting for the first people to fly? Who is someone you think deserves a monument? Why? ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ Draw your own monument for that person in the space below! 7 Fables of Flight The doors to the Wright Brothers Monument contain eight bronze panels that tell the stories of human’s attempt to fly. Read the stories that each image represents and complete the doors by drawing the panels that are left blank. 1.The study of bird wings influenced the Wrights early flying attempts. 5. The Wright brothers invented a unique design for modern propellers to achieve forward thrust. 2. A locksmith thought he could fly by attaching paddles to his arms and legs and jumping from chairs. 6. In Greek mythology, Icarus attempted to fly by using wax to attach feathers to his arms, but he flew to close to the sun. 3. Early gliding experiments inspired the Wrights to explore problems of controlled flight. 7. A Phoenix, a mythological bird, rose into the sky. 4. A philosopher believed he could add water to bags attached to a sail, and they would lift him into the sky when heated by the sun. 8. Kites were used by the Wright brothers during early experiments of lift and control. 8 Support from Family and Friends Wilbur and Orville Wright had to overcome many hardships and problems to achieve success. Through trust in one another and very supportive family and friends, from both Dayton and the Outer Banks, they were able to overcome all obstacles and achieve their dream of flight. Match the images below with descriptions of what each person or persons did to help Wilbur and Orville. A. 1. _____ Charles E. Taylor was initially hired to work in the Wright brothers’ bicycle shop in 1901. He helps Orville work out the design for the flyer’s engine. 2. _____ Members of the Kill Devil Hill Life Saving Station, trained to rescue shipwrecked mariners, help the Wright brothers launch the gliders and flyer. One member, John T. Daniels, even takes the famous photograph of the first flight. 3. ____ Katharine Wright, Wilbur and Orville’s younger sister, is a great source of support and encouragement for her brothers and is instrumental in getting Wilbur to accept a chance to speak at a meeting of the Western Society of Engineers. This helps Wilbur and Orville gain back their confidence after their second glider had many problems with lift and control. 4. ____ Bill Tate is the postmaster of Kitty Hawk and welcomes Wilbur to the Outer Banks. His wife, Addie, loans her sewing machine to the Wright brothers so they can sew the cloth material on the wings. B. C. D. 9 Wright Brothers Crossword Using your brochure and the exhibits in the visitor center, fill in the blanks and complete the crossword puzzle below. The Wright brothers, (1.)_________mechanics, wanted to learn how to (2.)_______. So they studied (3.) _____________and wrote the Smithsonian to get some expert (4.)__________. In 1899, they built a (5.)_________ to test their ideas at home. Then they built a (6.)___________and brought it to (7.)__________ to test it in the steady (8.)___________of the Outer Banks. They used a (9.)_____________ to sew the (10.)____________ wing coverings and ate (11↓.)____________ because food was scarce in the Outer Banks. In 1901 they built a (12.)___________ to gain more understanding of flight. Finally, the 1902 Glider was very successful, so they built a (13.)_________ which succeeded when they flew on December 17, 1903. Before their flight they asked John Daniels to take a picture with their (11→.)__________ of the first famous flight. Today, we honor their hard work and efforts with a national park and a (14.)__________ commemorating their achievements. 13 Word Bank fly glider flyer cloth kite birds advice monument camera winds bicycle ‘wind tunnel’ ‘Kitty Hawk’ ‘canned goods’ ‘sewing machine’ 10 5 6 1 11 2 12 7 9 14 3 4 8 10 Like Riding a Bike From their experiences at the cycle shop, Wilbur and Orville understood that with a little practice a rider could learn how to control and balance an unstable bicycle. They believed that balance and control were also the key to flying. However, control is much more difficult for an airplane because it has to move freely in three ways, called roll, pitch, and yaw, as opposed to bicycles which move in only two directions. Use the park brochure and Flight Room exhibits to fill in the blanks below. Word bank: pitch, roll, yaw. 1. __________ allows the airplane to tilt either left or right. Though the Wright Flyer controlled this with wing-warping, planes today typically use ailerons, flaps located on the edge of the wings. 2. __________ is the up and down movement of the nose of the airplane. This is controlled by the elevator. 3. __________ turns the nose of the plane left or right. This is controlled with a rudder that pushes the tail either left or right and turns the airplane. 11 Decoding History Telegraphs were used to send electrical messages over long distances through wires before the invention of telephones. A short signal is represented by a dot and a long signal is represented by a dash. Stringing the dots and dashes together, words and sentences are created that could be sent by wires across the country. This is called Morse code. After their first flight, Wilbur and Orville sent a telegraph from Kitty Hawk to their father in Dayton, Ohio. Use the Morse code below to solve the important message they sent. Morse Code: Message: A ._ B _... C _._. D _.. E. F .._. G _ _. H …. I .. J ._ _ _ K _._ L ._.. M__ N _. O___ P ._ _. Q _ _._ R ._. S… T_ U .._ V …_ W ._ _ X _.._ Y _._ _ Z _ _.. ... .._ .._. ___ .._. ._.. _. _. _._. .._ .. _ _. . … … …. _ … ._. Think about a goal you have reached or something you’ve accomplished. What would you want people to know? Create your own Morse code message below. 12 A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words On the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville set up a camera facing the spot where he thought the Wright Flyer would first fly. Wilbur handed John T. Daniels a small bulb to activate the shutter. Having never touched a camera, John was told to squeeze the bulb if anything interesting happened! This is the famous photograph that he took of the first flight. C F E A D B Study the picture above and match the following items: 1. The flyer slid down a 60-foot rail because it did not have wheels. 2. A small dolly and a bicycle hub under the flyer acted as a set of wheels. 3. A wooden bench was used to support the heavy wings before flight. 4. They used a shovel to bury the rail in the sand and to dig an anchor. 5. A battery provided the spark that was needed to start the engine. 6. __ A small can containing nails and a hammer were used for making minor repairs. Bonus! Find and circle Wilbur's footprints and the outline of the flyer’s right wing in the sand. 13 A Moment Carved in Time Visit the December 17, 1903 Sculpture at the base of the hill and use the signs to find the following answers: 1. What is the name of the sculptor? 2. Who donated the sculpture to the National Park Service? 3. What are the names of the five men who witnessed the first flight? 4. What profession did three of the witnesses share? Bonus! Get a new perspective of the world and what the Wright brothers accomplished – pose with Wilbur or Orville. Imagine the thrill of being the first to fly! Describe your feelings in three words. ________________ __________________ 14 _________________ Wright Brothers National Memorial Junior Flight Ranger Pledge As a Junior Flight Ranger, I promise to share my experiences here with others. I also promise to continue to explore, learn about, and protect all National Parks. This award certifies the recipient as an official Wright Brothers National Memorial Junior Flight Ranger. Junior Ranger Name Awarded by: NPS Official Signature Stamp 15