Paper Airplane Math

Game hour on Friday at Mathnasium - Fountains Dr location was filled with planes gliding and diving through the air.

Who’s paper airplane can fly the furthest?  Sounds like kids play, right?  It is!  As part of Mathnasium’s goal to keep math fun Mathnasium students competed in a paper airplane contest.  Making and testing paper airplanes is great fun AND gives kids additional math practice– try it at home!

 What factors influence the result? 

• Strength of throw  (initial velocity)
• Direction of throw (angle of release)
• Balance of glider (drag coefficient)
• Time
• Distance

The math vocabulary is shown in parenthesis.

Design your own glider or find and follow patterns found on the internet. 

Make adjustments (but keep adjustments small)

• If your plane nose-dives, bend up the backs of the wings
• If the nose of the plane rises then drops, add a paper clip to the nose

Do taller people have an advantage?  Yes, they launch their planes from a greater height.  To equalize height, calculate a glide ratio.  A ratio is a comparison of two numbers by division.  The Glide ratio (G) is calculated by measuring the distance Flown (D) and dividing by the Launch Height (H).    G = D/H

Experiment

• Change your launch height
• Change your speed and angle of release – does throwing harder make it go further?
• Add weights (paper clips, etc) to your plane

Data

• Keep track of your various flight results. 
• Information may be recorded in a table
• Information may be drawn in a graph.  Let the Y axis represent the Height of launch and the X axis represent the Distance flown.   Draw the plane’s path.  Use different colors to track different flights.

Result

Paper airplanes introduce children to one way math is applied:  to measure and quantify performance, record data and make adjustments , track trends and make predictions.   Having fun with math!

Pictures from Mathnasium's paper airplane contest and more will be posted  soon to our Google + page.