Balsa Wood Glider Design Analysis

Materials: Balsa wood, ruler, protractor, balsa wood glue, razors, rubber band, paper, washers (used for nose weight), and writing utensils.
Distance or Duration? The very first decision I have to make before I explain my design of the balsa wood plane is to decide whether I should try to build a plane that competes for distance or for duration. After thinking about what to pick, I decided out of the two, the better one to compete for would be duration. The reason why duration is the better option to compete for is because when we test our plane on flight day there is an extremely high chance that the weather conditions will be not be perfect for straight flight. This means if we compete for distance and there is a slight diagonal component
I thought I would take the free model plane that will be provided and scale it up so that the wingspan is the maximum size (42 inches) and scale the rest of the parts up as well. Now by scaling the parts of the glider to the maximum length permitted I would have the basic design ready. It’s better to have a bigger scaled glider because the air molecules don't change in size so the wind would have a lot more effect on a small
Another extremely important design factor is adding dihedral and maybe even polyhedral to the glider’s wings. This allows the plane to “naturally” stabilize itself. Dihedral is the upward angle of the wings on a plane and polyhedral is upward angle further down the wings. I’m going to put dihedral and polyhedral however, together they both will add up to an angle of 8 degrees which I believe would be an overall good angle. The reason why it’s important not to add too much dihedral is because with too much dihedral comes with an increase of drag. We know that increasing the angle of attack increases the drag coefficient exponentially while the lift coefficient increases linearly with a greater angle of attack. Making the plain have a dihedral of 8 degrees increases the angle of attack and therefore increases the resultant force because there is a higher amount of decreased pressure on the top of the wing. Some other enhancements that I will make would be to sand the wings so that the airfoil and the rest of the body is smooth and has the least amount air resistance possible. It’s important that the airfoil, which is a cross section of the total wing, has a streamline shape to it, in order to minimize air resistance. The airfoil will be a thick airfoil which in turn creates high lift. With high