Let’s Do Experiment in an Aircraft Cabin
I flight Garuda Indonesia from Denpasar to Makassar in 2014. The plane had inflight entertainment (IFE) inside so every passenger can enjoy entertainment privately during flight. Every passenger has his/her own screen attached to the rear side of the chair of the passenger in front. I accidentally set the screen on the travel program. I observed on the screen the information of aircraft altitude, wind direction, outside air temperature, aircraft direction, and so on. then I took the initiative to record the altitude and temperature of the outside air during take off in Denpasar and landing in Makassar. When I arrived at the hotel in Makassar, I tried to plot the temperature curve to the altitude and obtained the same results as in the reference. I thought it is interesting to write this as a paper related to the physics learning in high schools. I repeated the measurement in 2016 on a flight from Surabaya to Bandung and obtained similar results.
I also asked a fresh graduate student of ITB to do the same experiment in 2017. She took flights from Bandung to Denpasar to Surabaya and back to Bandung at the same day. She also obtained the same results. We than published those results in The Physics Teacher with the title “Experiment in an Aircraft Cabin”.
Image source: flight-report.com
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