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Build and test aircraft in this three-week aerospace engineering program for elementary through high school students on Yale University’s campus.
Course Description
What keeps a plane in the air, and what does it take to send something into space? Every aircraft and spacecraft begins with a question like that, followed by a design, a test, and a better design.
In this course your student will explore the science of flight through hands-on challenges. Paper airplanes, parachutes, and simple wing tests introduce the four forces of flight: lift, drag, thrust, and weight. Students then design and fly their own gliders, build, launch, and redesign water bottle rockets, and pilot and program mini drones to see how sensors and code keep an aircraft on course.
Each challenge follows the engineering design process: predict, build, test, and improve. Students record results, compare designs with teammates, and learn why a failed flight often teaches more than a perfect one. The course closes with the Mission Lander Challenge, where teams engineer a lander to protect fragile cargo through a drop test and present the reasoning behind their design.
This three-week course for elementary, middle, and high school students is part of Summer Discovery’s Institute for the Gifted program on Yale University’s campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Beyond class, students connect hands-on learning with campus life, new friendships, growing confidence, and curiosity they can keep exploring.
What Will You Do?
• Test paper airplanes, parachutes, and wing shapes to discover the four forces of flight
• Design, build, and fly a glider in a class flight challenge
• Launch a water bottle rocket, analyze the results, and redesign it for a second flight
• Explore how satellites and spacecraft stay in orbit
• Pilot a mini drone, then code it to fly a route on its own
• Engineer a lander that survives a drop test, then present your design
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Explain how lift, drag, thrust, and weight work together to keep an aircraft flying
• Use the engineering design process and test data to improve a design across multiple rounds
• Describe how gliders, rockets, drones, and spacecraft solve different flight problems
After completing the course requirements, you’ll leave with your glider, flight-test results, Mission Lander design presentation, and a certificate of completion, with new ideas to keep exploring flight.
Why Aerospace Engineering Skills Matter
Aerospace challenges make science concrete. When a glider nosedives or a rocket veers off course, students have a real reason to ask what went wrong and how to fix it, turning ideas like force and balance into something they can see and measure.
Students also practice working the way engineers do: sharing ideas in a team, weighing tradeoffs between competing goals, and explaining their reasoning. Those habits carry into any classroom, along with a clearer sense of which parts of engineering, aviation, or space exploration they might want to explore next.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, or 9th grade.
Your student may love building things, follow rocket launches, or wonder how airplanes stay in the sky. This course turns that curiosity into hands-on engineering. Students use basic math and measurement and work in teams to test their ideas. Across the challenges, they will record results, compare designs, and explain their choices to teammates. Curiosity and a willingness to try another design will help them take part. No prior engineering or coding experience is needed.
Institute for the Gifted eligibility requirements apply; see the program FAQ.
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive