Make a cylindrical paper airplane!
This is one of the 48 projects for our Instructables: Made In Your Mind (IMIYM) exhibition at the Children’s Museum of Houston showing from May 26, 2012 - November 4, 2012. Produced in partnership with Instructables, IMIYM is an exhibit where families work together to build different fun, toy-like projects that help construct knowledge and skills related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while instilling a “do-it-yourself” attitude in kids so they feel empowered to explore, tinker, and try to make things themselves. To learn more, check out the article here.
For this project, we've taken an Instructable created by someone else and modified it for use in the Museum. This specific project is based on the Flying Gyroscope Out of a Single Piece of Paper project by mspark400, but there may be others on Instructables that are also similar. Often, the materials and process for building our projects are designed for use with a large number of visitors (we see over 800,000 annually) and the need to ensure safety in a mostly non-facilitated environment. So, yes, many of these projects have room for improvement in both materials and methodology, which is PRECISELY what we want to encourage the kids to do. So please do share your ideas for improvement and modifications!
This is one of the 48 projects for our Instructables: Made In Your Mind (IMIYM) exhibition at the Children’s Museum of Houston showing from May 26, 2012 - November 4, 2012. Produced in partnership with Instructables, IMIYM is an exhibit where families work together to build different fun, toy-like projects that help construct knowledge and skills related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics while instilling a “do-it-yourself” attitude in kids so they feel empowered to explore, tinker, and try to make things themselves. To learn more, check out the article here.
For this project, we've taken an Instructable created by someone else and modified it for use in the Museum. This specific project is based on the Flying Gyroscope Out of a Single Piece of Paper project by mspark400, but there may be others on Instructables that are also similar. Often, the materials and process for building our projects are designed for use with a large number of visitors (we see over 800,000 annually) and the need to ensure safety in a mostly non-facilitated environment. So, yes, many of these projects have room for improvement in both materials and methodology, which is PRECISELY what we want to encourage the kids to do. So please do share your ideas for improvement and modifications!
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We are selective in our materials for cost, ease of use, and safety due to our high traffic (800,000 visitors annually). So, for our purposes, this design worked best. But you may have other ideas - please share!
1 - 8½” x 11” sheet of paper
Masking Tape
1 - 8½” x 11” sheet of paper
Masking Tape
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You cut it in half, using the top part only. Then, take a can opener and cut of the top of your can. Mine fly really well.
This is a great instructable so I hope I'm not raining on the parade too much by saying it can't be flying because of the lift effect of the air going over the wing. It is symetrical so any lift on one bit of the thing would be matched by the exact opposite lift from the bit the opposite side that is the other way up.
I suspect the folding is needed to give the paper enough strength so you can throw it. Just a cylinder of paper with no folding would be really hard to throw or give spin to.
When I looked up resources online to try to get some more info about why it (or the X-ylo toy) fly, I found this thread on the physics forums with some speculation that matched my own: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=167993
The X-zlo creators' website (http://www.x-zylo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=38) claims there is no concensus on how it works.
While looking up the above website links, I just spotted a book by David Landon Tarr called "What Makes the Amazing X-zylo Fly" (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982114834/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_2) which, based on the Amazon preview, reads at times more like his opinion, but in reading the preview, some of the physics being discussed are a bit beyond my ability to understand at the quick glance, so that may be a resource to explore the physcis more deeply.
Hope that helps! If anyone has read the book and can provide a better explanation, I'd really appreciate it!
Where you are probably being confused is most wings have an asymmetric airfoil. This means that the plane prefers to fly right side up, and while it can generate lift upside down, it is usually not efficient and can stall easily. Typically airfoil asymmetry is used to increase the "flat plate lift approximation" in lager airplanes. The flat plate lift approximation is basically the idea that if the wing gets small enough there is little difference between a flat plate and an airfoil. This is why most paper planes work at all.
An aerobatic planes wing is symmetric in that it looks the same upside down. It relies on the "angle of attack" to create lift. The angle of attack is the angle between the oncoming air and the "chord" (an imaginary line that runs from the leading edge to trailing edge).
Because of the symmetry, both the top of the circle and the bottom of the circle create lift the same way a biplanes wings do, and the sides of the circle function as rudders.
Your foil acts like a symmetric foil. The folding you did only increased the stiffness of the leading edge and provided a convenient way to create the loop. Without it, it would be a very flexible (and unstable) structure that wouldn't fly far.
There have actually been some planes in history that have used this shape of wing successfully, although they never made it to production. Among them is the french Coloeptere
By spinning the structure you are invoking precession. Precession is what keeps your wing from immediately stalling and falling (think gyroscope). It also helps the wing keep its circular geometry as it flies. Modern intercontinental missiles also spin to take advantage of the same effect.
Hope this explanation helps. I used technically correct jargon in places so if a term is unfamiliar you should be able to "Wikipedia" it.
I may well be incorporating some of this tech into later high altitude horizontal versions of this http://pleasefund.us/projects/daisy-kite-power-generator
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjBZ7_I-uy8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va0lYBXlUeA
and in case you need any more paper airplane ideas,
http://theonlinepaperairplanemuseum.com/
If you need any more ideas, or want a paper airplane expert to visit your museum, just let me know!
dean :)
I'm part way through turning this into a Jubilee science investigation - they'll be shaped like small crowns, and they'll be comparing size to range. Could be quite educational.