Can the Design of a Paper Airplane Make It Fly Faster and Farther?

Overview

Objectives/Goals To find out which design of a paper airplane determines how fast or how far it can fly. Can the design also determine the flight accuracy and the airplane's ability to perform stunts? Methods/Materials paper airplane book, sturdy white paper 8 1/2" x 11", tape measure, stop watch, log book, paper clips, bull's eye target, and launcher Results The larger wing area of both the Stealth and the Slice performed better in distance. In the speed test, the Stealth was the fastest. The Slice and the Blue Angel were equally as fast, and the Aerobat was the slowest. For accuracy, the Slice and the Blue Angel hit the target the most. The Aerobat and the Stealth hit the target half the time. For stunt performance, the Aerobat was able to complete all four stunts attempted. The Blue Angel also performed well, but the Stealth and the Slice were more awkward during the stunts. Conclusions/Discussion I conclude that the design of the paper airplane determines its ability for speed, distance, accuracy, and stunt performance. The airplane models with the larger wing area flew greater distances. The longer based and larger wing designs flew fastest. The Aerobat was able to perform all of the stunts perfectly. Finally, the two larger based models were the most accurate at hitting targets.

Competition history

• CSEF 2004 Aerodynamics/ Hydrodynamics · Entry J0123

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2004 project