Required Materials

First, here are links to folding instructions for each of our plane designs:

When entering these into your data sheet, enter their designs as dart, lock, spin, and hunting

Some of these can be a bit tricky, but I have (mostly) gotten each of them to successfully fly. I would encourage you to practice on the printer paper to get a sense of things, especially before moving to the heavier card stock. Some of these take a few tweaks to get them going, others require either small incisions with scissors or recommend tape. Both of these are available at the front of class.

Submission

When submitting your flight log, be sure to save your CSV file as GroupID_A.csv (or B or C or whatever letter identifier is found on the top of your packet)

Here is a link for submitting the csv once finished

In-class Instructions

The goal of this study is to analyze the flight distance of paper airplanes. In particular, we will be considering three factors that may influence this distance:

Each group will be assigned two separate designs and will be given two colors in both light and heavy weight. As such, each group will be responsible for testing the flights of 8 separate planes. For example, in addition to an experimental design, each group will be assigned the Basic Dart design. You will then create four separate dart planes, two of each color, one each of heavy and light. Your group has been assigned:

_________Basic Dart__________________________________


__Raven    Lock Bottom    Tail Spin    Hunting Flight_________

Instructions for folding these planes are included on the course website.

You will carry out these flights in the hallways outside of Noyce 2402, where tiles have been conveniently marked to help calculate distance. You should mark the tile in which the plane comes to a rest. The first tile past where you throw is Tile 1, anywhere past that is Tile 2, then Tile 3, etc.,

Following each flight attempt. You should record the attempt number, the design, the distance flown, paper color, paper weight, and your Group ID on the associated flight logs. You will be responsible for entering your flight details into a csv and then submitted into a course repository. Be conscientious that all of your data is entered lower-case (except Group ID) and without additional spaces. Please try to have these submitted by Wednesday, November 27

You should aim for 10-15 flights for each design/color/weight model to ensure that we have enough data to properly analyze it. Time permitting, you are welcome to continue collecting data until the end of class.

Your packet should include the following:

  1. These flight instructions
  2. 12 pieces of color paper, 6 for each plane
  3. A collection of flight logs to record data
  4. Scratch printer paper to practice your folds

Extras each of the colors and the printer paper, as well as various plane components (scissors, tape) should be available at the hanger (front of class)