Come Fly With Me

Odds are we all spent large amounts of our childhood making paper airplanes, and as with everything, some were better than others, soaring through the classroom, swerving into people, the majestic origami artworks of young bored kids. But although we know that they fly, and that it’s fun to make them fly, has anyone ever stopped to consider how?

When a plane, paper or otherwise is in flight there are four main forces that are key in keeping it up in the air:

Thrust: this is the driving force behind the motion of a plane, the force we apply when we launch our beautiful creations at the nearest head/doorway. This pushes forward from the back of the plane and without it the planes simply wouldn't move.

Drag: This is the force that acts backwards on the plane as its mighty nose barges through the multitude of air particles in the way. Due to their very small surface area this tends not to be so much of a problem for paper planes as….

Gravity: let’s face it we all know what gravity is and that it pulls the plane down so here is a cool picture made to depict a complex theory about what gravity is to compensate.

Lift: Now this is a more complex thing, the wings on any professionally made plane are created to maximise lift by curving them and angling slightly upwards as shown, but any sort of wing can achieve it as it is the basic principal that as an object flies through the air, if it is aerodynamic and provides enough thrust then the air underneath the wings should be angled downwards and as an equal and opposite reaction the plane is forced upwards, hence the flaps on real planes, paper planes however do not have a constant thrust so this force only lasts a small amount of time before gravity does its thing.

Well that’s it for this week and I can say I was once again shocked by the complex forces that we have learnt to master even with inventions made of paper. Human ingenuity really is an incredible thing, I really appreciate everyone who reads this, it's great to know that other people are curious like me, see ya. :)