Science: Mad about

By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist

Not everything in the world of science is doom, gloom, laser beams and explosions. Sometimes science can be approachable and exciting — all you need is a piece of paper.

It’s easy to believe that the paper airplane is a modern invention, designed by absent-minded students idly wasting time within the confines of their classrooms, but it turns out this couldn’t be further from the truth. Paper planes have a tremendous history that predates a vast number of other inventions including the flush toilet, the printing press, gunpowder and even the water wheel.

It’s likely that the first paper planes weren’t actually made from paper at all. Paper as we know it was first developed around 105 CE in China, but there exists a historical record of hand-built gliders existing in the area as far back as 500 BCE. It’s likely that many of these folded gliders were made with parchment, which is a very thin hide that has been used as paper for as long as humans have written things down.

Leonardo Da Vinci famously used paper in the design of his glider wings, which we hope went untested on human subjects. Many of the mock-ups and small prototypes he developed were made of paper to test airflow and lift. Da Vinci’s ornithopter was developed in 1487 and designed to emulate the wings of bats and birds. These wood and paper wings were intended to be strapped to someone’s back and arms, allowing them to flap to generate lift and fly — likely providing a stellar pectoral workout in the process. Unfortunately, humans are quite heavy and we would require a tremendous amount of strength and endurance to generate enough lift to counteract our bulky forms.

A similar design to Da Vinci’s ornithopter is the contemporary wingsuit, though this is used for gliding rather than taking off like a bird. The wingsuit requires a subject to drop from an altitude and fall at an angle. Essentially, the whole basis of the wingsuit is that you’re falling, but the suit is generating enough lift so that you’re falling at an angle. Eventually, you’re going to hit the ground, so you’d better have a parachute to help slow your descent. It’s no mistake that this design very closely mirrors the webbing of a flying squirrel, as this creature was a direct inspiration for the design of the wingsuit.

Paper planes perfectly mirror the design philosophy of falling at an angle. They require an initial investment of energy — being thrown by you — to generate enough lift to glide. Real planes can glide for considerable distances, but they require a constant output of energy (fuel) to continue flying, which a paper plane cannot generate on its own.

While this might be one of the largest differences between your schoolhouse special and a commercial airliner, you can apply aerospace design philosophies to your paper plane in order to make it complete specific tasks. Ensuring that your folds are very uniform, crisp and as even as possible will help maintain your plane’s stability. Adding extra folds toward the front of the plane will make the plane more stable and travel farther, while keeping more weight towards the back and upturning the rear edges of the wings may coerce the plane to aerobrake or perform loops. You can also fold a wildly unbalanced plane and see if it turns or arcs in unexpected ways.

Not all paper gliders need to look like a plane. If you want to make a tumbler that spins and flips as it glides towards the ground, model your structure after a maple seed with one heavy end and a sail on the back. If you want to make a quick and unconventional glider, start with a square piece of paper and fold corner to corner once and then fold the bottom eighth of an inch of the paper up twice and wrap or tape it together — it should look like the pope’s hat, but it’s actually a very agile glider. There are a few augmentations you can make to your paper plane to give it some more unique traits and allow it to perform specialized functions, though you’ll have to consider how the additional weight may alter its ability to fly, just like a real plane. You can add a propeller to your plane, but without an engine it won’t do very much. Luckily, you can create a lightweight engine using toothpicks, a straw, paper clips and some rubber bands with your propeller to create a basic torsion engine.

There are loads of videos online that can show you how to do this, and it works to create propeller planes as well as helicopters. Some of the first torsion engines were utilized by the Roman legions to create the onager, a catapult that would fling boulders at enemy fortifications. Torsion is a great cheat code for the game of physics, allowing you to store energy in an object to be exerted as tremendous force later. Imagine what it would take for two guys without torsion to fling a boulder a hundred yards — I’ve lifted a lot of heavy stuff, and I can safely say that I wouldn’t be able to throw a boulder over a house without exploiting physics in the process.

Are you looking for some fun new paper plane examples to bond with your grandkids or torment your teachers? The library has a whole host of books easily found in our catalog, but my personal favorite is Paper Airplanes: Flight School Level 1, by Christopher Harbo. It’s a very easy-to-read and visual guide with basic mountain and valley folding techniques commonly seen in origami.

Very few of the designs here require a reverse fold or more tricky techniques, making it a great introduction to origami and paper planes. The Long Ranger and Dynamic Dart have been the favorites of the classes I’ve run for schools.

As one final tip, from one folder to another: if you’re struggling to get a precise fold, put a finger at the exact point you’re trying to fold. Once the fold is down, use your thumb to slide down the edge to give yourself a nice, sharp crease. Most importantly, remember that when it comes to origami, just like anything in life: failure and patience are currencies to purchase success.

Stay curious, 7B.