Tim Cassidy entered John Mackin’s classroom on the second floor of the science building and was mystified by the massive wood and plexiglass structure located near the wall.
“I just walked in one day and there it was,” Cassidy said. “It was a sight to be seen,”
The curiosity over the mysterious device will be no more, because over the last several months, Mackin, aerospace engineering teacher, spent his free time building a wind tunnel for KHS and the students in his class.
As a kid who once dreamed of being an astronaut until he learned that wearing glasses would prevent that goal, Mackin now works on passing along those dreams to eager students through his courses.
One way Mackin delivers his passion is through the time he invests outside of his job to improve the learning experience, such as building devices like his newly completed wind tunnel.
“It is a small version of what they would have in Boeing and NASA and places like that because it’s used for analysis of wings,” Mackin said.
A wind tunnel is a device that measures different aerodynamic qualities of an airfoil, an object such as part of a wing or a propeller blade. In the tunnel, a series of screens and a fan straighten the air flowing through the tunnel and bring it parallel to the top and bottom of the walls. The air then flows past the airfoil, and sensors at the bottom make measurements of how much the wind lifts and drags.
“I started about the beginning of the school year, and I finished it about two weeks ago. I probably put about 50 hours into it,” Mackin said.
Over the summer, Mackin and his fellow engineering teachers attended training as part of a program called Project Lead the Way. In the course, the teachers discussed wind tunnels and were advised to purchase a small model through the organization that set up the course. Instead of using the school funds to buy an expensive machine, Mackin, using the next best source, got on the Internet and found a series of plans to assist him as he built his own wind tunnel.
In a few weeks, the aerospace engineering class will become the first students to test the device. The classes will be able to experiment with anything that moves through air, such as sections of boats, motorcycles and planes.
“If you think of an RV, you can only get away with the blunt front because you’re only going up to 55 or 60 miles per hour. If you are going to go faster, you have to find a way to basically cut through the air,” Mackin said.
Future plans for the table-sized machine involve finding a way to make it mobile, such as moving it onto a table or cart. Also, the engineering classes will not be the only ones allowed to use the machine.
“The freshman physics classes might use them for an extension on topics like friction and forces,” Jim Cibulka, freshman physics teacher, said.
While it is not needed as part of the curriculum, the wind tunnel will demonstrate the effects of forces on objects.
Recently, Mackin also borrowed a smoke machine from the theater department so students can witness the smoke moving around the airfoil within the tunnel and get a better visual of how the process works.
“I want students to understand the process because what we are doing is exactly what happens in companies like Boeing,” Mackin said. ”They are getting a real sense of what it is like to be an engineer.”
