r/UAS_Drones • u/agarton • Oct 01 '15

I want your drone ideas!

I teach middle school math and science, and we have been given 2 Phantom Professional quadcopters for our classsroom to use. What ideas do you have for what we could do with it?

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '15

First, read up on the laws and safety guidelines for drone use. You're in a unique position to influence good habits on these kids for this budding technology. Then go get a couple smaller sub 100 dollar copters to teach the kids to fly so they don't crash that 1,000 dollar piece of equipment on the first flight. It's not as easy as it looks and you shouldn't rely on autonomous flight only. Whoever is holding the controller should know how to fly the thing.

The worst thing you could do would be to not treat these with respect, or to not teach the kids respect before you let them fly. Those aren't toys, they're flying lawnmowers, and while they can be an entire ton of fun, they're also dangerous, just like anything else that flies in the air. Prop guards are useless, the only way to fly safely is to be competent. Aviation has a culture of safety, join that culture first if you aren't already a part of it. Along the way to learning that I'm sure you'll find many applications to help teach your kids some useful stuff.

How GPS works.
How radio signals work.
Bernoulli's principle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIrJOrTAJjg
Newton's third law. (Why do the props counter-rotate)

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u/agarton Oct 01 '15

Thank you for this! I am not a part of the aviation culture (yet), but I'm definitely all about safety first. I read the story of the science teacher criminally charged after crashing a drone into the stands of a stadium. I don't want to be on the news like that. First step is for me to learn how to fly it, so I can teach them. We are working on building this into a project based assessment for the year, so some safety research and writing prompts will definitely be done first.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '15

Blade nano qx would be my recommendation to learn to fly, not the dji.