Paper Airplanes

For this project I have made three very different paper airplanes. The goal was to find the design that traveled the farthest. Each airplane was made only of regular white printer paper, and had no weight added to it. Additionally, each airplane was thrown at eye-level and the distance was measured from the launcher's toe to the nose of the plane where it landed.

Plane A

Plane B

Plane C plans found here.

Distance 1 Distance 2 Distance 3

Plane A 2m 1.75m 1.5m

Plane B 3m 2.5m 3m

Plane C 1m 1.25m 1.25m

Distances traveled by the planes:

Above is a chart comparing the average distance traveled by the planes. Clearly Plane B goes the furthest!

So how's it work?

The plane moves forward because it is given force from your body thrusting it through the air. The amount of force or power you put into projecting the plane forward will affect how far the paper airplane will fly. The plane will slope down in its flight due to gravity pulling it slowly to the ground. The planes with more surface areas don’t go through the air as well but they sit on top as more of a glider, catching the air underneath the large surface area of their body.