• Get two cups and put them bottom to bottom.
• Take a piece of tape and wrap it around the center of the two cups where their two bottoms meet. (The open end of the cups should be facing opposite directions.)
• Take one rubber band and cut it so it becomes a strip of rubber.

You are ready to shoot it!

Try Shooting It:

• Hold the flyer and the rubber band so the rubber band hangs down like a tie from the center of the flyer (where the two bottoms of the cups meet). Hold it there with your thumb.
• With your other hand, pull the rubber band tight and wrap it once around the cups, ending so the band is under the cups and pointing away from you (like a runway).
• Launch it by pulling the rubber band forward and letting go of the cups.

[ Look at the Launch Position! ]

Launch your Magnus Flyer.
It moves forward, begins to spin, and lifts up.
When it moves forward, it slams into the air in front of it. The air has two ways to go: above the cups or below the cups. The spin on the cups help the cups grab the air in front of them and carry it over the tops of the cups, similar to a waterwheel. Once the air is behind the cups, the cups dump off the air and shoot it down. As a result of the air being pushed down, the cups are pushed up. The air shoots off the cups in one direction and the cups move in the opposite direction. Newton explained it as "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

To the Wright Brothers Collection