Paper Airplanes

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Recommended: Physics concepts for the flight of paper planes

Paper airplanes are the simplest aircraft to build and fly, and students can learn the basics of aircraft motion by flying paper airplanes. Building and flying balsa wood or styrofoam gliders is an inexpensive way for students to have fun while learning the basics of aerodynamics. Knowing that is good to understand the basics. This essay will cover things that are important to predicting the flight of a paper airplanes.
To begin, There are four reasons why paper airplanes fly. One reason is because of thrust. Thrust is the force given to an object (paper plane mafia). In this case, the thrust is provided by the thrower. Another reason is lift. On paper airplanes the plane can’t provide lift because they don’t have correct wing design. They can still fly thought because of the wide wings. The force of gravity is also a reason. The force of gravity plus the thrust provided can allow the paper airplane to glide down slowly while moving forward. Lastly there is drag. Drag is a pull back force that slows something down. On actual planes they have a device on the wing that creates drag to slow the airplane. If there is less drag on an airplane it will go faster. …show more content…

Aerodynamics is the study of how gases interact with moving bodies (live science). In this case air is the gas and the airplane is the moving body. When something is aerodynamic air can flow around it easily. If something is aerodynamic there is no drag or as previously said no pull back force. All airplanes are mostly aerodynamic. Car companies try to make car as aerodynamic as possible so the car gets better gas mileage. Paper airplanes are almost completely aerodynamic because they are very thin. Any added drag will slow the paper airplane down. Also added weight can be a factor of aerodynamics. uneven weight can weight down one end of an airplane and create

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