Launching a German Glider - Smarter Every Day 75

Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So, in fifth grade, I used to make paper airplanes with my best friend Tim. Now, we took two different approaches. You see, I would read books and try to figure out the best way to make a paper airplane based on other people's experience, and Tim would take the time and build them himself.

Now, the results were pretty interesting. Tim was always better than I was. Now, I chalk that up to the fact that I believe I had a knowledge of how to build paper airplanes, but Tim actually had an understanding of it. So today, I'm going to take you to Germany. I've found an academic club there that not only focuses on the knowledge of how these things work, but they actually put it into practice and gain an understanding.

So today, we're going to start a two-part video series. First of all, I'm going to show you how to launch a glider, and then in the later video, I'm going to show you what it's like in the cockpit with us. I'm Destin. Let's get smarter every day!

Yeah, the wings are taped on, huh? It gets pretty noisy if you don't tape it, and it helps for the airflow. Okay, so gliding is a huge game of balancing your energy. You go from kinetic energy to potential energy and back and forth again.

Okay, okay, there's two ways to get potential energy into the system. The first one is an airplane, and the second way is a winch. And Katarina is operating the winch. Okay, this is absolute genius. You pull the glider from way down there with this winch. Think, oh wow! Oh, are you serious? That is amazing!

So she's pulling the rope in as it falls with a parachute, so there's no slap. Perfect! No finished! You're very good at this. Yes. Yeah, um, this is um on the plane, and then when now it starts this, and when the vle, it's then it falls out automatically, and then that makes the parachute operate.

Yeah, and the parachute is that, um, it doesn't fall that fast. Your job is very important. Yeah, of course, otherwise the S-BL cannot start. Yeah. So when I outfitted the gliders with different camera views, the point was to learn.

So these are all students, and we're looking at all the different videos to make sure we did everything correctly. And, uh, they're trying to learn what they did wrong, what they can do better next time, playing with efficiencies and drag and things like that. So it's really fun.

Anyway, you're getting smarter every day! Please subscribe. Welcome to Germany! We're getting and we're going to a disco party in our glider. Is it really tradition to wear a hat like this, or are you guys just making fun of me?

Okay, if you want more information about gliders in Germany, you need to talk to this lady, Florentina, here in Germany. So, uh, how can we contact you? What's your group name? You could contact us on our homepage. It's the Academic Gliding Group at the Katra Institute of Technology. This is now the Black Forest with oversight.

Yeah, that's a good idea. You made it smaller. Blue, it's in the trees.