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Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

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Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#81

Post by ultrafez »

rcthompson wrote: post #66
horsebridge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it this [1] program? [1] https://archive.org/details/thegpa

What a great app that was. The step-by-step animated folding instructions were actually 3D. It had buttons to rotate the view around to any angle. In hindsight they must have written their own simple 3D engine or something. Obviously they didn't need to render too many polygons at once, and no textures or shading.

The thing I'm most impressed and surprised about is that archive.org runs a Windows 3.1 emulator in the page, so you can actually use the program. I fully expected it to just be information about the program, perhaps with some screenshots. Modern browser tech is amazing.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#82

Post by Pokepokalypse »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #47
kqr wrote: post #11

My interest in science started when a friend and I folded a few paper planes, tested them over a small downhill section outside my house, made notes about what worked, tweaked and experimented with new designs, and so on. It blew my little mind that with structured experimentation you could design things that actually got better with each generation. Where would the improvements stop? With hindsight, I realise that m…

"Great International Paper Airplane Book" [0] was my drug. [0] https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00mandrich

Oh, yes, that book was great. The helicopter one is pretty unique, and there was another one that is VERY simple to make, and you end up making a flying-ring, and that plane actually performed beautifully. It flew straight and fast; wasn't much for long slow glides, but it never failed to impress people - especially with it's simplicity of construction.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#83

Post by MrPoush »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #52
carapace wrote: post #12

One of the finest paper airplanes is the origami design of Prof. James M. Sakoda of Brown University "winner of the origami award in the First Inernational Paper Airplane Contest" in 1967 and published in "The Great International Paper Airplane Book" (Jerry Mander, George Dippel, Howard Gossage) https://i.imgur.com/Kv94Glf.png

Yes, that is perhaps my favorite. It always reminded me of the Orion space clipper in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Did a fascination with paper airplanes inspire Glider, or was it just a happy coincidence?

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#84

Post by JKCalhoun »

MrPoush wrote: post #83
JKCalhoun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is perhaps my favorite. It always reminded me of the Orion space clipper in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Did a fascination with paper airplanes inspire Glider, or was it just a happy coincidence?

Oh, definitely related. My single mom was a "secretary" and occasionally brought home typing paper for me to amuse myself with. I drew a lot of pictures, made a lot of paper airplanes. :-)

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#85

Post by JKCalhoun »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #82
JKCalhoun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Great International Paper Airplane Book" [0] was my drug. [0] https://archive.org/details/greatinternation00mandrich

Oh, yes, that book was great. The helicopter one is pretty unique, and there was another one that is VERY simple to make, and you end up making a flying-ring, and that plane actually performed beautifully. It flew straight and fast; wasn't much for long slow glides, but it never failed to impress people - especially with it's simplicity of construction.

It featured some "match rockets" too that probably would be a hard-sell to an editor/publisher these days....

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#86

Post by mod »

mcherm wrote: post #74
mod wrote: post #16

In fourth grade we had a paper airplane contest, but they had a restriction on the design: a circle about the size of a quarter was on the page, and no fold or crease could go through the circle. The circle was located a few inches above the exact center of the paper. Anyway I made a "dart", and just offset the angle a little to avoid the circle. It was good, and most of the competition was incredibly bad. And a few…

Reading that story, I feel bad for Derek. They thought outside the box, and came up with an objectively superior solution -- only to have it rejected for no reason other than the fact that they thought outside the box. On the surface, this sounds like a fabulous exercise: it requires some creative engineering thinking. But apparently, the way they addressed the winners left both of the top two teams feeling unsatisfi…

I recognize injustice that his clever idea didn't win, but he was my worst enemy, so I disguised a smug grin while he pled his case to the judges.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#87

Post by mod »

dylan604 wrote: post #68
mod wrote: post #16

In fourth grade we had a paper airplane contest, but they had a restriction on the design: a circle about the size of a quarter was on the page, and no fold or crease could go through the circle. The circle was located a few inches above the exact center of the paper. Anyway I made a "dart", and just offset the angle a little to avoid the circle. It was good, and most of the competition was incredibly bad. And a few…

>my name was announced as the wrong-gendered version that really sounds like the kind of thing a person might get stuck with through out their days in school. did this stick around for awhile, or was it mercifully a short lived thing?

Honestly, not that bad. Classmates openly laughed during announcements. The next day they issued a correction, which was worse than no correction.

A few teases in the first week maybe, overall quite merciful.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#88

Post by mod »

werds wrote: post #79
mcherm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading that story, I feel bad for Derek. They thought outside the box, and came up with an objectively superior solution -- only to have it rejected for no reason other than the fact that they thought outside the box. On the surface, this sounds like a fabulous exercise: it requires some creative engineering thinking. But apparently, the way they addressed the winners left both of the top two teams feeling unsatisfi…

#justiceforderek

I looked Derek up on Facebook and it seems he's living a good life. Beautiful wife, four kids, and seems like he coaches youth sports.

He'll never have my blue ribbon, though.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#89

Post by dylan604 »

mod wrote: post #87
dylan604 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>my name was announced as the wrong-gendered version that really sounds like the kind of thing a person might get stuck with through out their days in school. did this stick around for awhile, or was it mercifully a short lived thing?

Honestly, not that bad. Classmates openly laughed during announcements. The next day they issued a correction, which was worse than no correction. A few teases in the first week maybe, overall quite merciful.

I guess you had better friends that I did. I had a name "given" me that stuck all through school, and would probably still get mentioned by some of the asshats from back then.

Re: Paper Airplane Designs (2013)

#90

Post by clankyclanker »

kqr wrote: post #11

My interest in science started when a friend and I folded a few paper planes, tested them over a small downhill section outside my house, made notes about what worked, tweaked and experimented with new designs, and so on. It blew my little mind that with structured experimentation you could design things that actually got better with each generation. Where would the improvements stop? With hindsight, I realise that m…

The one in the YouTube video looks very similar to (or exactly like) one of the designs from one of the Klutz books around the turn of the millennium. I might’ve found it in the Explorabook? I’m pretty sure they called it the best paper airplane you’ll ever make, it even had the same wing flaps.

It also looks almost exactly like one in the cover of the paper airplane book:

Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes Craft Kit https://a.co/94zUS0G

Turns out Klutz might’ve printed quite a few paper airplane instruction manuals.

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