What is the most complicated thing you know about paper airplanes?

Stuf

I'm just looking for brief little factoids about paper airplanes, how they fly, drag, lift, etc that are complicated or complex, expressed in, preferably, a manner that uses jargon and gibberish excessively.

I'm not asking anyone to do my homework - I'm just covering a topic I don't know too much about. The core of this assignment concerns methods of presentation - in this case, I'll be focusing on the bad ones (and part of that will be confusing students with technical jargon).

So, let me have it - the more confusing, the better.

Thanks in advance.

MrDelish

The more you fold it the less likely it is to fly well

Nappuccino

Planes need a balance of large wings and strong wings. Too large and the wings will be flimsy and won't support the lift the planes need. Too small and they will be study but won't generate the lift of the wing.

Also, tail fins are cool, but don't really make the plane fly better. (that is more from experience than actual learned knowledge)

Demerdar

Make sure you put some sort of weight at the front end. Sometimes you may generate too much lift, depending on how your wings preform which will cause your nose to rotate upwards and fuck your shit up unless you have enough weight on the front end to counter-act the pitching moment the blades put on the body of the plane.

Improvolone

They follow the mass

BrotherVoodoo

The better ones are usually shaped closer to rectangle shape and have probably 75% of the mass in the first 10-20 percent of the plane. They don't look cool at all but those are the kinds that fly the furthest.

PolloDiablo

put a staple in that bitch's nose and it'll fly for miles

Szechuanosaurus

Well, they are made from paper and I know a thing or two about that.

For example, paper is measured by weight by surface area (gsm in europe or lbs in the US). However, due to variations in the materials used, fiber length etc. two types of paper of equal weight by surface area may not have identical width or stiffness. Take a 300gsm uncoated paper versus a 300gsm gloss coated paper. Assuming the paper is from the same range and thus the wood pulp, fiber length etc. is identical, the gloss coated paper is likely to be thinner than the uncoated paper because the gloss coating adds to the weight by surface area so the paper has to be thinner to maintain the 300gsm paper weight.

Thus choice of paper could have substantial consequences for the performance of your aircraft. Depending on the weight you choose, whether it is coated or uncoated and what went into the pulp mix you could end up with a very heavy plane with poor stiffness in the wings or vice versa.

L|ama

talking about a drag coefficients would probably be good (higher drag coefficient means an object has a lower terminal velocity and will decelerate faster). Paper with a smooth finish would have a lower drag coefficient.


Or if you want a bit of fun: timecube. It's pure jargon and only he knows what it means (if it does mean anything).

tynic

Talk about scale effects on turbulent and laminar air flows.

Local H Jay

the coolest kinds are the ones that do flips

Monolithic_Dome

I remember that we had this book as a kid. It's got a brief description of the world record-holding paper airplane flight, some background on paper airplanes in general, and cut-and-fold models of a bunch of cool paper airplane designs, along with analysis of how/why they work.

Since it's available at amazon for literally one penny (plus shipping), I think it'd be a good reference.

Dman

To me there are two very different types of paper airplanes. Narrow ones you launch as hard as you can and gliders.

You can make long narrow arrow dynamic airplanes and throw them up into the sky and get maybe a hundred feet distance.

Try the same with a wide glider and the wings can't handle the force of the throw and it falls at your feet.

But if you put some weight (Staples are indeed awesome) at the nose and gently toss your glider from a height it will go way way further than the narrow paper-airplane could dream of.

Wind is a huge factor.

Joe Chemo

Be sure to use aeronautical terms like pitch and yaw... try to throw Bernoulli's principle in there as well.

Didn't the Japanese try to throw paper airplanes from the ISS? Look for some primary literature about that for good jargon.

subedii

tynic wrote: »

Talk about scale effects on turbulent and laminar air flows.

Also be sure to reference the impact of using different impulses, drag coefficients in air, and at different altitudes, and impact of gravitic changes such as what the effect would be if you threw it on a space station (I'm guessing most paper planes would fly cylindrically instead of dropping down, because of having too much lift).

Darkewolfe

Use jargon... hmm...

You want to leverage the synergies of the plane's agility in order to collectively look forward and harness the knowledge management of the cloud.

Count Funkula

This might help:

http://www.paperplane.org/Aerodynamics/paero.htm

Stuf

Fantastic stuff! Thanks all!

Nappuccino

Monolithic_Dome wrote: »

I remember that we had this book as a kid. It's got a brief description of the world record-holding paper airplane flight, some background on paper airplanes in general, and cut-and-fold models of a bunch of cool paper airplane designs, along with analysis of how/why they work.

Since it's available at amazon for literally one penny (plus shipping), I think it'd be a good reference.

Oh my god, you just brought back some wonderful memories of the planes I built with this book.

I defiantely recommend reading it if nothing else but for the description of the world record holding flight... and the cool planes.

Warning though; they might be a penny used because the plane paper has all been used (the ones with the lines showing you how to fold the plane. I don't remember if those pages were actually crucial or not to building the plane though.

WitchHazel3000

This link might help:

http://www.paperairplaneshq.com/terminology.html


There's also instructions and videos on how to fold a paper airplane there. Actually 50 different paper airplanes.