Don’t Drag Me Down

The Effect of Flap position on Paper Airplanes

Presenter(s) Information(s)

Carson Stone, Drake Hass

Abstract or Description

Abstract

Don’t Drag Me Down

The Effect of Flap Position on Paper Airplane Flight

How do you fold a great paper airplane? We researched how airplanes fly to get ideas. We learned that there are three forces that contribute to flight; lift, drag, and thrust. We also discovered Bernoulli's principle. We used this information to hypothesize that our paper airplanes would fly further, longer and more accurately if flaps on the wings are positioned down.  

We used 3 airplanes in our experiments. A launcher, placed on a tripod, was used to shoot each plane to control for thrust, launch angle and height at take off. Each plane was launched 5 times. The distance the plane traveled, the landing distance from the target line and the amount of time planes spent in the air was measured for each flight.  

Flaps were cut into the wings of each plane. We launched and took measurements with flaps 1/3 the wing length in the up position and then down position for five flights. We launched and took measurements with flaps 2/3 of the wing length in the up position and then down position for five flights.

 We found that the distance traveled and time in air were longer when the flaps were up for all planes. Planes landed closer to the target target line when the flaps were down. We have concluded that, with flaps up, paper airplanes fly further and stay in the air longer. With flaps down, they fly straighter.