Other Wind Tunnel Research at a Community College

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A community college student leading a group of engineering and science majors is refurbishing a gifted wind tunnel with a testing chamber of 12 x 5 x 5 inches. The team is exploring various experimental ideas, including testing paper airplane designs, analyzing drag on car bodies, designing airfoils, studying resonance frequency failures, and conducting chemistry reactions at different wind speeds. They seek suggestions for experiments that would impress potential internship or graduate school applications. Ideas for impactful projects include building and optimizing a streamline generator if one is not already present, as well as the possibility of publishing research on their findings, such as tuning the wind tunnel or results from their experiments. The refurbishment itself is considered an impressive endeavor that could enhance their resumes.
SphericalCow
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I'm a student at a community college that was gifted a wind tunnel by a local uni. I'm leading a group of 5+ engineering / science students to refurbish and tune it.

The testing chamber is around 12 x 5 x 5 inches, and we have free reign to do anything we'd like. We've had some ideas like testing different aspects of paper airplane design, drag of car bodies, designing air foils, resonance frequency failures, chemistry reactions at different wind speeds, etc. Most of us have a year before we transfer.

Q1) Do you have any ideas for experiments a group of engineers and science majors would love?However, we'd also like to be able to put something impressive down for our applications to internships / REUs / grad school.

Q2) What can we do with this that will look awesome on a resume? For example, could we publish a paper on tuning it, or paper airplane designs?

Additional comments / thoughts are welcome. Thank you!
 
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I would not try and impress. That said, the refurbishment is probably more "impressive" than whatever you stick in there.
 
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Does it already have a streamline generator? If not, it could be an interesting project to build one and optimize it.

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https://www.cartagena99.com/recursos/alumnos/temarios/AER_T2p1-InviscidFlow_(English).pdf
 

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