Informative Essay On Paper Airplane

Today I will be talking about paper airplanes and what type of paper airplane flies the farthest also which one stays aloft the longest. Some of the topics I plan to discuss involve aerodynamics, drag, shape, size, forces, and gravity.

Drag is the force of flight that pushes an airplane opposite to the direction it is moving. The biggest types of drag are friction, when air rubs against the surface, and difference in air pressure. Think of a drag like swimming treading through the water you can't move as fast as you can on land the reason for that being because the water is causing drag on your body. The planes shape, size, and speed also affect the amount of drag on an aircraft. These are the factors of aerodynamics. Wings aerodynamics is shown by it's lift to drag ratio. The lift will make at a given speed an angle and can be one to two orders of magnitude greater than the total drag on the wing. High lift to drag ratio needs a smaller thrust to push the wings through the air at with a sufficient lift.

The materials used to configure the paper planes is crucial in the flightpath and aerodynamics of the plane. Thicker materials tend to hold shape better although they are slightly heavier, versus lighter materials that might throw the plane off course and resist the wind more. In a trial run I found on prezi a student
In this project I also became aware of how similar paper planes and real planes are in the design you have to plan for all outside forces including wind, gravity, and the engines (or my hand in the paper planes case.) No matter what the design there's no way to plan for the outside forces involved in this experiment so you'll never get a true result every single time. All of the different aspects of engineering come into this and I was blown away and intrigued at the different dynamics that take place in this