More on airplanes

Today’s book: “The Glorious Flight across the Channel with Louis Bleriot” by Alice and Martin Provensen

Reflecting on our PAF museum trip, today we continued the topic of flying and airplanes - we read a book about a Frenchman Louis Bleriot, who was the first one to fly across the English Channel.

The book says: “Louis Bleriot (1872-1936) was one of the truly great pioneers of aviation. He devoted the fortune acquired by his invention of an automobile searchlight to the development and construction of his high-performance aircraft, the “BLERIOT XI”. His flight across the English Channel (we got to know that this is not a TV channel but a water body running between to parts of land) demonstrated to the world that barriers of land and sea no longer existed for
the airplane.”

The story of the book goes as follows: On a nice outing with his family, Mr. Bleriot notices in the sky above his native town of Cambrai an airship! This inspires him to build his own airplane. Over years, he makes several attempts – 11 to be exact – to build his own plane and finally succeeds. Mr. Bleriot and his “BLERIOT XI” participate in a challenge to fly across the English Channel with a prize of £ 1,000 offered for it. He sets out on early morning of July 25, 1909, almost gets lost at the sea but 37 minutes after taking off, he finally lands on English soil! Mr. Bleriot wins the prize!

After the story, we made airplanes of our own: a darting one and a gliding one. Darting one has a sharp front and streamlined, smooth body – it flies far and fast. Gliding one has a flat front and wider wings – it flies slowly and gracefully. We talked about the differences in the design of these
planes and why they fly the way they do. In the picture below, you can see some of our darts and gliders.