what ever happened to the tube?
https://www.instructables.com/id/Tubular-paper-airplane/
Paper Airplane Designs
11–20 of 218 posts
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#12In the 90's I went to a small middle school, the 8th grade class was 21 people. Once, the school had a contest in the indoor gym, we each designed paper planes and the one who flew it the farthest won a prize. We argued with teachers over an allowance for a little bit of tape, which some of us used just as nose weight. However, each kid was the one to "fly" his own plane, a big oversight. Almost the last kid, when it…
I did this too! My exploitation of the loophole was aided by the fact that we were also allowed to use (an unspecified number of) paperclips to "balance" our designs. The result was a very dense square with the aerodynamics of a skipping stone. I also brought a traditional paper airplane which I was allowed to fly when my other design was predictably disqualified for general bad faith.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#13I wonder if anyone has attempted to use machine learning to try and build a better paper airplane. I feel like that would be super interesting.
If you give me a realistic physics environment to train an agent in I'll do it for you.
I wonder if anyone has attempted to use machine learning to try and build a realistic physics environment. I feel like that would be super interesting.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#141-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2
Those (apparently) are the input choices of the options on the upper left. The values update when you change the selections. Creative I guess.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#15In the 90's I went to a small middle school, the 8th grade class was 21 people. Once, the school had a contest in the indoor gym, we each designed paper planes and the one who flew it the farthest won a prize. We argued with teachers over an allowance for a little bit of tape, which some of us used just as nose weight. However, each kid was the one to "fly" his own plane, a big oversight. Almost the last kid, when it…
Similar story from a university aero course that ended with a paper airplane competition.
There were some remarkable paper airplanes, making amazing flights, all sorts of research and time went into developing the ideal model.
One guy comes up representing his team and he gets out a piece of rolling paper and a lighter. Tears the tiniest portion off the rolling paper, sets it alight, and then follows it with his finger through the air as it took forever to land on the ground.
I believe the incident led to a rule change for later years.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#16I grew up reading "The Ultimate Paper Airplane" by Richard Kline: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Paper-Airplane-Step-Instruct...
I didn't have the right tools or expertise to build most of his planes (most notably rubber cement), but I do wonder how these planes stack up against currently popular paper airplane models.
He talks a lot about his invention (and patenting) of the Kline-Fogleman airfoil, which creates a vortex that influences the laminar flow and increases stall resistance.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#17I tried for the longest paper airplane flight in history - from the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. Unfortunately, the plane hit the anti-suicide mesh, lost all momentum, and from there went straight down. I took the elevator down, walked to the plane, picked it up, and threw it in the trash can. (Don't litter.)
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#18Fantastic! I love the design of this site: the way it greets you immediately with big thumbnails of actual paper airplanes.
I was flying some "Basic Dart" and "Square" planes (those are the only two designs I know by heart) with my kids the other day and I was thinking, "I bet there are a bunch of great designs online somewhere..." And here we are!
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#19I grew up reading "The Ultimate Paper Airplane" by Richard Kline: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Paper-Airplane-Step-Instruct... I didn't have the right tools or expertise to build most of his planes (most notably rubber cement), but I do wonder how these planes stack up against currently popular paper airplane models. He talks a lot about his invention (and patenting) of the Kline-Fogleman airfoil, which creates a…
I have a vivid memory of how excited I was by the 60-minutes episode about this paper airplane, and I grabbed a copy of this book when I saw it in my college bookstore.
Making the various models was a lot of fun, although I don't think I ever obtained the specific weight of paper they mention in the book. That's still on my bucket list.
Re: Paper Airplane Designs
#20Great site, going to try and interest my kids, but - no videos of the planes actually flying? I want to know what "acrobatic" actually means.