For our do it better project we get to pick a previous project and do a better version of the project. My group decided to do a hybrid hybrid car physics of sports video. Basically we have the physics of sports physics and hybrid car style presentation. However instead of doing our project on a sport we did it on paper airplanes and flight theory. For this we made many different paper airplanes however we only took the few that worked into the testing stage. Along with normal planes we made normally we also made 2 planes made by the world record holder for distance.
concepts
Lift: Is the force that keeps a paper airplane up and is one of the 2 most important forces in plane flight. There are many different ways to make a paper airplane stay up. One way is to make sure when ever you throw the airplane you throw it at a 45 degree angle which maximizes the height and distance it can travel. Another way you can make it gain more lift is with wide wings that are slightly angled down which helps it "pick up" more air as it falls down which slow it down. A third way to make it gain more lift is designing the wing like an airplane wing which creates lift by making a low and high pressure zone which keeps it more a float. The final secret way that works for a few types is to make a very light paper air plane out of phone book paper using all the previous tips and an angled piece of card board and walking along underneath it can also make it fly long up to as long as you can fly it which is very difficult to do (about 3 months to master).
Thrust: Is the second force you want on your paper airplane to make it fly the farthest. There are 2 ways to produce trust on a paper airplane made of paper, the weight distribution and the throw. For the throw you do something called a projectile toss which is used often when throwing javelins and darts long distance. You preform one by holding the object in the correct way you hold it for a normal throw then you draw back your arm and lower your knees a bit. After your in the correct position you throw the object pushing up from your legs and fling your arm out until it hits a 45 degree angle then you release object as it maximizes distance. The other way you can increase the trust you plane can travel is by making it so the weight distribution is front facing but balanced by doing this it will naturally fall forward which improves the trust as it falls down.
Drag: Also known as wind resistance this the counter force to thrust. It works opposite to the direction it is traveling and when drag become to large the object will nose dive or even turn around. You can reduce the drag of an object by making the plane more aerodynamic which makes the plane less air resistance.
Weight: Weight is the force of gravity pulling the paper airplane down. Without the force of gravity acting upon the paper airplane it would fly off and never land. Although weight can not be decreased you can improve the balance of the airplane so it doesn't nose dive.
Conclution
This project was very interesting compared to other projects as instead of learning things and then doing a pre selected project instead for this project he said take an old project and do it with all the knowledge you learned. Because of this you were given freedom on basically everything and let you basically do what ever as long as you can identify the physics of what that thing is and can present the knowledge. Because of this there were many unique projects like a rocket car (literally had a homemade type f rocket) and ours which was to build paper airplanes and test them out. This project was a huge success in my opinion do to me both making a good plan and sticking to it with out any hassle or worry to it as well as me working well with my teammate. My first major success was with my plan which was very well thought out and gave us plenty of time to work with out worrying about having to come in at lunch. This thought me the importance to make a plan as I am usually a very improve style worker doing work as it comes and very rarely plan out what jobs need to get done. Another thing I improved on is working with my teammate as for a lot of the measurements you required at least one more person in order to take it accurately. This meant that when ever we need to measure something you would need to make sure your partner was willing to help you do it. One thing i could improve on is not distracting myself and others as there was definitely cases of me distracting him. However we worked well when not distracting each other and in the end we worked well at finishing the project. Another thing I learned was that I get fixated on perfecting things namely on my countless attempts to fly the Walk this Ray. This lead me into an issue where I had made my self think that I was helping but in reality I was waving a piece of cardboard around the classroom. This is definitely an issue i will want to resolve as it will help keep me on task.