Designing Your Own Paper Airplanes

The banners above are really there to add emphasis to the point that most people would think that designing your own paper airplane is hard to do. The fact is that it is not hard. For the science fair student we may need to add some equations and/or deeper explanation as to the "whys" for these tips (and that information can be found in the eBook section). But, for the average person who just wants to experiment by folding and throwing here are a few tips to help reduce how many tries it takes to get a winner.

Step #1 is to decide what type of paper airplane you want - a dart, a glider, or a transitional airplane.

A dart is a long, thin, sleek folded paper airplane that produces very little lift. If is made to be thrown very hard and go a long way by having very little drag. It wont stay in the air long because it doesn't have any ability to float. The "wings" are not made to give lift but are made to act as "rocket fins" (or fins on an arrow) to keep the airplane body going in a straight line.

As an added note the words wings and rocket fins are enclosed in quotes here because the term fins for a rocket is something totally diferent then fins for an airplane. In a rocket, or an arrow, fins are surfaces that are used to keep the body of the rocket going in a straight line. If the nose of the rocket were to try to turn to the side air hits the surface of the "fin" and pushes the tail end back into alignment (This surface only works when the body is in a fluid such as air or water). There could be any number of fins on a rocket but three or four are common.

In terms of airplanes these surfaces would be called stabilizers. Most airplanes have two stabalizers commonily a horizontal tail section and a rudder or vertical tail section. Airplane fins are surfaces found at the tips of the wings and their purpose is to keep airflow going over the top and under the bottom of the wing without rolling around from one to the other at the sides.

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