Coding classes in Causeway Coast and Glens

A wind blowing at an angle to a runway can be split into two parts. The part along the runway, wind speed times the cosine of the angle, is a headwind that helps; the part across it, wind speed times the sine, is a crosswind that pushes sideways. The learner writes a function that, for any wind, tries every runway end and picks the one with the least crosswind, breaking ties by the biggest headwind. Then it sweeps the wind round all 360 degrees for three layouts. Wind speeds and the 10 knot crosswind limit are our own round numbers; real limits depend on the aircraft.

The geometry is tidy. Three runways give six runway ends, 60 degrees apart, so the wind is never more than 30 degrees off one of them, and the sine of 30 degrees is exactly one half. With a single runway the wind can blow straight across it, putting the whole wind sideways. Take a 20 knot wind from 040 degrees: on a single runway facing 000 the crosswind is 12.9 knots, over our limit, but in the three-runway layout the runway facing 060 cuts it to 6.8 knots with a stronger headwind of 18.8. Stronger winds eat into every layout, which is why the last column drops.

The code has a trap that catches many beginners. Python's sine function expects radians, not degrees. Pass it 30 and it returns about minus 0.99 instead of 0.5, and every crosswind is nonsense, some even negative. Learners write a test that the crosswind for a wind straight down the runway is zero and for a wind straight across is the full wind speed, and the slip shows up at once.

Checking code against answers you already know is a strong reason for a Causeway Coast and Glens teenager to keep coding in 2026. The longer argument is in why teenagers should still learn to code in 2026.