1. Paper Plane Project
(Combined Comms and Application
of Number)
Ryan L. Williams

2. In my project I…
• Will build two paper airplanes.
• With finished results I will measure and work
out:
– Mean
– Range
– Mode
– Median
• I looked at:
– Aspect Ratio
– Wing Span
– Lift Drag Ratio

3. Video

4. Measuring Distance
– I built two paper airplanes.
– I threw both 5 times, to measure the distance.
– The first paper airplane:
• The last throw of the first paper airplane was not too
good.
• This was because creases started to get in my paper
airplane.
• The paper went straight down and crashed into the floor.
• This give me a poor distance.
– The second paper airplane which I built:
• First throw was flying fine.
• Last two attempts for this paper airplane were awful.

5. Measuring Distance

6. Averages
• The Mean: • The Median:
– I worked out this by – The median is the number
throwing the paper in the middle.
airplane five times. – The calculation in Excel
– Then measure how far it which I’ve worked out for
went in the room (in median is
centimetres). “=MEDIAN(B3:B7)”.
– The calculation in Excel – My final results for the
which I've worked out is median were 367 cm.
“=AVERAGE(B3:B7)”. – This is a bit higher than
– My final results for the the mean because the last
mean were: 349.2 cm. throw drag the mean
– I had to add all my right down.
calculations up, then
divided them by how many
times I threw them.

7. Aspect Ratio
• This is to do with the shape of the wing.
• It shows how far and fast it could travel and how far
it could glide.
• High aspect ratio planes are usually slow but all good
gliders.
• Low aspect ratio planes are usually fast but not so
good at gilding.
• The Aspect Ratio of my two paper airplanes were:
– First one – 1.0
– Second one – 0.8
• I worked it out by dividing wing span by the wing
chord.

8. Aspect Ratio
• Final results with the
paper airplanes.
• The first airplane to
your left is called
Rapier.
• The second airplane to
your right is called
Floating.
• As you can see to your
right has a higher
aspect ratio.

9. Checked work
• I checked by • Errors I fixed were
– I looked at the aspect ratio I
worked out for the Rapier and I – Changed the decimal place
could see it was wrong because into one in Excel.
my answer was higher than the – I also by mistake in the
aspect ratio for the Floating
plane. PowerPoint compared the
– This couldn’t be right because median of the Rapier with
you can see by looking at the the mean for the Floating.
shape that the Floating is an – I spotted that this couldn't
higher aspect ratio than the
other one. be right because they were
– I had divided the chord by wing so different that I went
span instead of wing span by back to the Excel document
chord. and looked again.
– When measuring the distance I
checked by I used the right – Spotting that the distance
units on the tape by walking and marker had been kicked out
counting because one pace is of place. (spotted by pacing).
equal to 1 metre.

10. Rounding
• I measured to the nearest:
– Centimetre for distance
– Tenth of a second for time
– Millimetres for wing span and wing chord
• When working out I worked to the
nearest:
– One decimal place

11. The sites we used
• http://www.paperairplanes.co.uk - Got
the instructions on this website, to
build my two paper airplanes. (with good
instructions)
• http://www.google.co.uk – For letting me
http://www.google.co.uk
using their search engine. (and using the
“define:” function on their website.

12. Tips for best performance
• DON’T RUSH!!!
• Use a ruler or FLATTEN the creases in the
paper airplane.
• If it shoots up in the air:
– check if the wing if folded up towards the back
– or put weight on the front
• If it shoots down:
– pull the flaps up
– weight on the plane