Fair Science Testing With Paper Airplanes

Fair Science Testing With Paper Airplanes

1. Find an airplane template to follow. Design your airplane. Test it with many flights. Practise how to hold and throw it to produce the most consistent straight flight.

2. Decide what aspect of your paper airplane you would like to investigate to see whether it will have an effect on its flight distance. You will need to change it a minimum of three times and will therefore need to build three airplanes.

3. Choose from the following:
Size of paper plane is designed from
Type and mass of paper designed from
Mass on the nose- paperclips or staples
Slits in the wings-number or length
Folds in the wing-width
Holes in the wings or body
Can you think of any other area on your plane that can be varied
What will you be measuring as your results ? They need to be quantitative.

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These results will depend on everything else- both your independent variable as well as the control variables, so we therefore call it the dependent variable. So what is your dependent variable?

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9. Now write up the purpose of your experiment using your independent and dependent variables in your statement. There are two main formats.

To determine the relationship between the (your independent variable) ___________________________________________________________________________

and the (your dependent variable) ___________________________________________________________________________

OR

To determine the effect of ______________________________________________________

on_________________________________________________________________________

10. Why is it important to test the effect of one independent variable at a time?

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