How to Make a Paper Plane?


A paper plane is a toy plane made from paper. Folding paper to create paper planes is often referred to as aerogami. Aerogami is considered to be the easiest form of origami to master. The term paper plane can also mean a plane made with cardboard or craft paper.

Today, a paper plane is not the basic plane that could be made in just five easy steps. It has reached a different dimension.

Over the years, paper planes have gone through three distinct phase that have made them even better.  There are:

  • Delivering high performance
  • Being modeled to scale
  • Modeling with a few extra folds as possible

Paper plane enthusiasts and engineers have created paper planes that follow engineering principles and aeronautics.  These planes fly well and show outstanding performance.  The most basic paper plane takes just 5 easy steps to model.

Paper Planes

When we talk about made to scale models of planes, we talk of models that can be either life size or scaled down.

In today’s world, design paper models is an enjoyable pursuit, since the designing of a plane’s wings and other surfaces can be done to scale by tracing the surfaces to precision. Also, CAD software enables tracing to precision for easy creation of the various parts of the model.

Though the mass: density ratio of paper does not allow the performance of paper planes to reach the same peak as those made from Balsa wood, where power to weight is concerned, yet when the wingspans is between 250 mm and 1,200 mm, the Critical Re is very like similar balsa models.

Paper models generally have a very high or very low wing aspect ratio.  Therefore, they mostly fly at velocities far below their wing plan form and aerofoil Critical Re, where flow breaks from laminar to turbulent.

Experiments with using different types of paper finishes for origami paper planes, has thrown up some interesting revelations. When smooth finish paper was used, the performance of origami and compound origami planes improved remarkably.

This performance was also caused by the paper’s higher mass and, therefore, better penetration. It has been seen tat the marginal performance and scale types mostly gain no benefit by using heavier, shinier surfaces, while performance profile-fuselage types have been seen to show improved performance when shiny, slippery paper was used.  But, in the case of scale types the performance has fallen with the use of heavy shiny papers.

All the time, research is on to see how to make paper planes perform better.  Make your own plane and experiment! Make the simple five fold plane or make those fighter planes!  Be part of the research.

Filed Under: Arts & Entertainment

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About the Author: Jason Prickett loves to write about home maintenance and stuff you can do yourself instead of hiring any professional. His step by step guides will assist you in completing your home maintenance tasks.

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