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Drones fly high during 4-H discovery event at Fredonia

Submitted Photo Students learn about remote sensing by assembling a foam drone, attaching a small camera, and creating a plan to fly it over their target.

JAMESTOWN — Cornell Cooperative Extension Chautauqua County’s 4-H Program held two Drone Discovery events recently as part of the 2016 National Youth Science Day Engineering Design Challenge.

4-H National Youth Science Day is the world’s largest youth-led science experiment. Each year, thousands of youth take part in the National Science Challenge focusing on important STEM topics and issues. Drone Discovery was developed by Anne Glasgow and June Mead of CCE Broome County, Chip Malone from CCE Genesee, Susan Hoskins, Soil & Crop Sciences, Cornell University, and Alexa Maille, New York state 4-H STEM specialist.

The activity is a hands-on engineering design challenge that explores the science behind drones and how they can solve real-world problems. The youths first experimented flight dynamics with prop copters. They then created a foam glider, the PFG-9, and further experimented with flight dynamics and modified the glider so that it would fly in a circular pattern. Youth then worked as a team to assemble a foam glider and attached a small camera with the goal of videoing their pre-determined target. The final activity in Drone Discovery was learning about coordinates and how they are used to remotely fly drones. The children utilized Scratch, a kid-friendly program developed by MIT that allowed them to create codes. Drone Discovery programming directed the children to program the flight of a virtual drone to detect a target.

CCE Chautauqua 4-H Youth Development held two Drone Discovery events. Mike Jabot, professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia and CCE Chautauqua master gardener, held an event for 12 kids on the SUNY Fredonia campus with the help of students Kyra Skelton, Elly Martin, Jasmine Barrow, Autumn Joseph, Yuki Yamauchi, Liza Ganz, Stephanie Dueras and Zach Beaudoin. Kate Ewer, 4-H community educator, held an event for six kids at the Frank Bratt Ag Center.

For more information about Drone Discovery and to purchase your own kit, visit http://4-h.org/parents/national-youth-science-day or call the 4-H Office at 664-9502 ext. 212.

Submitted Photo Children show off their PFG-9 gliders.

The 4-H Program is one of many programs offered by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chautauqua County. CCE-Chautauqua is a community-based educational organization, affiliated with Cornell University, Chautauqua County Government, the New York state SUNY system and the federal government through the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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