Introduce Your Child to This Paper Airplane Database
Making paper airplanes isn’t just a great low-tech boredom reliever – it’s also a very educational thing. Yes, all the time you spent folding the spiral notebook into cool gliders in 11th grade economics, you were actually getting an engineering lesson. Carefully, eh?
Now, parents, it’s time to introduce children to the classic pastime. A great place to start: the Fold ‘N Fly paper airplane database.
The site contains 40 different paper airplanes with instructions and videos. Sketches are sorted by skill level and aerodynamic performance (distance, flight time, acrobatic and decorative). You can start at Basic and then work your way up to some expert levels, such as these:
Origami
This one was designed by an origami master.
Swift hawk
The Fast Hawk “is best suited for distance, mid-air and acrobatics,” writes Fold ‘N Fly.
Star flight
An acrobatic miracle. When thrown at the correct angle, Star Flight flips in mid-air. The original design, Starfighter, was developed by John M. Collins, aka The Paper Airplane Guy , and featured in his Record Paper Airplane and The New Paper Airplane World Champion ‘s Book.
All of the Fold ‘N Fly instructions are free, but if you want the downloadable pages with line indicators to show you exactly where to fold, that’s $ 5.
After making paper airplanes, show your children how to best throw a paper airplane. According to the experts featured in the Going Deep paper airplane episode with David Rees , this means the wings must be flat, hold the plane where most of the paper layers overlap, and fly with ease. Keep a flight log to see how planes respond to various variables. Perhaps one day your little aviation master will set the world record for a paper airplane flight : a whopping 226 feet 10 inches.
H / t Boeing Boeing