2022

Factors Affecting Airtime

of a Paper Airplane
HOW DOES THE MASS, SIZE OF WINGS, AND THE INITIAL
FORWARD FORCE AFFECT THE AIRTIME OF A PAPER AIRPLANE?
MAHMOOD ATEYA MOHAMMED
Table Of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2

Experiment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..4

Results……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6

Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7

- Mass………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7
- Size of wings…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8
- Force………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………9

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….12

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..13

Appendix………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14

Page 1 of 16
Introduction

The development in the science of Aerodynamics never seized to thrive in the past ages, and

this helped in the creation of more quality planes. It all started with theories and testing until

people crafted a flying object with wings. However, the very first kind of airplane that people

are exposed to at a very young age is a paper airplane. Paper airplanes can be easily made by

folding a piece paper into the shape of a plane, and we could have never imagined how much

joy a single piece of paper could bring to us. In my experience, my friends and I would often

make paper planes and test them out and would compete in making the paper airplane with

the most flight time. Looking back at this experience now, I am again interested in paper

airplanes and how factors affect the time at which the plane stays in flight, hence why I chose

this topic. Therefore, the aim of this research paper is to demonstrate the effect of mass, size of

wings, and the initial forward force on a paper plane’s flight time through an experiment and

the use of graphs and statistics.

Even though technology has drastically reduced the usage of paper airplanes in testing in

general, it has given them a new lease on life as a serious hobby for aviation fans and model

builders. Paper airplane designs have grown more complex, requiring accurate cutting, folding,

and gluing, as well as being more widely available to the public, thanks to the wide availability

of CAD (Computer Aided Design) software, the expansion of the Internet, and affordably priced

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printers allowing for accurate reproduction of the design parts. (Clark) Many inventors came up

with different paper airplane designs such that kids do not understand their creation. Since I

want to revisit my childhood through this exploration, I will be exploring only one of the old

school designs and use it for my experiment. The focus of this essay will be to study and display

the effects of various factors that affect flight time of an old-fashioned paper airplane.

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Experiment

The details of the experiment are as follows:

Apparatus: A4 and A3 Papers, Stopwatch, Ruler

Variables:

- Control: Distance from the ground(height)

- Dependent: Time of flight

- Independent: Size of wings, mass of paper, initial forward force

Folding Technique:

The folding technique (Flight) used is from a YouTube video titled: “How to Fold an Easy

Paper Airplane in 1 Minute (60 seconds)! — Flies Extremely Well!” by Foldable Flight.

Setup:

- Fold paper into a plane, only 1 folding technique will be used

- Use ruler to measure the size of wings

- Setup mobile phone such that a clear view of the experiment will be recorded

- Prepare stopwatch to get time of flight

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The venue of the experiment has been selected such that there is no air resistance on the paper

airplane and no objects obstructing its path.

Parameters:

For the masses of the paper, 2 masses will be used, which are the masses of A4 and A3

papers. 1 folding technique will be used for every paper plane, and the sizes of the wings will be

modified 3 times throughout the experiment. As for the initial forward force, it is very difficult

to measure the exact force used to throw the paper plane. Therefore, 3 different forward

forces will be used which will be labelled: low, medium, and high force. For each instance, the

time-of-flight measurement will be recorded 3 times and their average will be the final or actual

time of flight. This is done to reduce measurement error and have more accurate data.

Procedure:

This experiment will require 2 persons. One person will oversee throwing the paper

plane from a height of 1.7 meters, and the other will oversee recording the airtime of the paper

plane using the stopwatch. The process will be very simple: the first person will throw the paper

plane diagonally upward, while the other person will record the airtime using the stopwatch.

For each instance, the time-of-flight measurement will be recorded 3 times and their average

will be the final or actual time of flight. This is done to reduce measurement error and have

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more accurate data. For this experiment, a mobile phone will be used to record the experiment

in action as proof.

Results:

This is the data gathered after conducting the paper airplane experiment:

For A4 sized paper (Mass: 5 grams) (Anon):

A4 Paper

WingSize/cm2 Force time1/s time2/s time3/s AvgTime/s

61.5 lo 1.81 2.06 1.78 1.883333333
61.5 mid 1.4 1.33 1.5 1.41
61.5 high 1.73 1.89 1.93 1.85
51.5 lo 1.06 1.08 0.99 1.043333333
51.5 mid 1.3 1.14 1.38 1.273333333
51.5 high 1.4 1.29 1.59 1.426666667
69.1 lo 0.76 0.81 1 0.856666667
69.1 mid 0.86 1.08 0.95 0.963333333
69.1 high 1.43 1.35 1.56 1.446666667
Figure 1.1

For A3 sized paper (Mass: 10 grams) (Anon):

WingSize/cm2 Force time1/s time2/s time3/s Avgtime/s

117 lo 0.76 0.85 0.81 0.806666667
117 mid 0.9 1 0.98 0.96
117 high 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.4
108.25 lo 0.9 0.75 0.7 0.783333333
108.25 mid 1.05 1.23 1.3 1.193333333
108.25 high 1.8 1.7 1.5 1.666666667
125.25 lo 1 1.3 1.1 1.133333333
125.25 mid 1.2 1.04 1.5 1.246666667
125.25 high 1.5 1.78 1.8 1.693333333

Figure 1.2 Page 6 of 16

 Analysis

Mass:

To begin with, I will examine the effect of mass on a paper airplane with the use of technology.

Using a Graphic Display Calculator (GDC), I will use 1-Var Stats to obtain essential information

on the A4 and A3 data tables. The results are the following:

A4:
A4 Mass Stats

Figure 2.1
A3:
A3 Mass Stats

Figure 2.2
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Starting off with the mean, A4 data has a mean of 1.46 while A3 data has a mean of 1.21. This

states that, in general, an A4 paper airplane has more flight time than an A4 paper airplanes.

Additionally, A4 data has a standard deviation of 0.35 and interquartile range of 1.855 – 1.155

(0.7) and A3 data has a standard deviation of 0.34 and interquartile range of 1.535 – 0.885

(0.65). This information proves that A4 paper airplanes have more variety in their flight time

than an A3 paper airplane and can reach greater maximums.

Size of wings:

To figure out the extent of the effect of wing size on a paper airplane’s time-of-flight, the use

of graphs is the best approach for this. To begin with, I will inspect the A4 and A3 data tables

and make a graph on wing size and time-of-flight using the following data:

WingSize/cm2 51.5 61.5 69.1 108.25 117 125.25

time/s 1.25 1.71 1.09 1.21 1.05 1.36

The time values have been obtained by getting the average time of each set of values, because

every wing size has 3 corresponding time values.

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 time-wingsize graph
1.8 1.71

1.6
1.36
1.4 1.25 1.21
1.2 1.09 1.05
time/s

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
WingSize/cm2

Figure 3.1
This is the result when the time is plotted on the y-axis and wing size on the x-axis. The graph

tells us that the wing size with the highest flight time is 61.5 cubic centimeters, and the wing

size with lowest flight time is 117 cubic centimeters. Moreover, we notice that there is not

much difference between the flight time of wing sizes 69.1 and 108.25. This also proves that

smaller changes in wing size led to greater differences in flight time, and huge changes in wing

size led to lower differences in flight time.

Force:

The last factor to be examined in this experiment is the initial forward force. Like mass, the

force factor will be analyzed with the use of GDC and 1-Var Stats. The results are the following:

Page 9 of 16
For low force:
Low Force Stats

Figure 2.3
For medium force:
Medium Force Stats

Figure 2.4
For high force:
High Force Stats

Figure 2.5

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To begin with, we can compare the values of the means. The mean time for low, medium, and

high force are 1.08, 1.17, and 1.58 respectively. This shows that on average, a medium force

throw yields the highest flight time. Furthermore, low force data has the highest standard

deviation of 0.41 while medium force has the lowest standard deviation of 0.180. This tells us

that a low force throw has more variety in flight time than the other two forces, while medium

force throw has low variety in flight time. High force throw has similar variety in results to that

of a medium force throw. In support to the previous statements, low force data has the

greatest range of flight time with that being 1.88 - 0.78 (1.1), while medium force data has the

lowest range of 1.41 – 0.96 (0.45).

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Conclusion:

To conclude, I was able to answer the question: “How does the mass, size of wings, and the

initial forward force affect the airtime of a paper airplane?”. I answered it using technology and

graphs, and the data used was extracted from an experiment. The experiment was a very fun

experience all throughout, even though I encountered many difficulties such as having to

repeat a throw multiple times due to obstacles or a poor throw or folding the paper into plane

multiple times to try and get it as symmetrical as possible. This may have resulted in

unavoidable inaccuracies in the data, but I tried my best to minimize it. However, through this

experiment and exploration, I was able to satisfy my curiosity on this childhood memory, and

using it, I can finally be able to create a very satisfactory paper airplane.

Page 12 of 16
Works Cited
Anon. Weight Of A Sheet Of Paper By Paper Size & Grammage. n.d. Article. 17 9 2022.

Clark, Anders. Histroy of the Paper Airplane. 5 8 2014. <https://disciplesofflight.com/history-of-the-

paper-airplane/>.

Flight, Foldable. How to Fold an Easy Paper Airplane in 1 minute (60 seconds)! - Flies Extremely Well! 24

11 2018. Video. 9 September 2022.

Page 13 of 16
Appendix:

A4 Paper Data

WingSize/cm2 Force time1/s time2/s time3/s AvgTime/s

61.5 lo 1.81 2.06 1.78 1.883333333
61.5 mid 1.4 1.33 1.5 1.41
61.5 high 1.73 1.89 1.93 1.85
51.5 lo 1.06 1.08 0.99 1.043333333
51.5 mid 1.3 1.14 1.38 1.273333333
51.5 high 1.4 1.29 1.59 1.426666667
69.1 lo 0.76 0.81 1 0.856666667
69.1 mid 0.86 1.08 0.95 0.963333333
69.1 high 1.43 1.35 1.56 1.446666667
Figure 1.1

A3 Paper Data

WingSize/cm2 Force time1/s time2/s time3/s Avgtime/s

117 lo 0.76 0.85 0.81 0.806666667
117 mid 0.9 1 0.98 0.96
117 high 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.4
108.25 lo 0.9 0.75 0.7 0.783333333
108.25 mid 1.05 1.23 1.3 1.193333333
108.25 high 1.8 1.7 1.5 1.666666667
125.25 lo 1 1.3 1.1 1.133333333
125.25 mid 1.2 1.04 1.5 1.246666667
125.25 high 1.5 1.78 1.8 1.693333333

Figure 1.2

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A4 Mass Stats

Figure 2.1

A3 Mass Stats

Figure 2.2

Low Force Stats

Figure 2.3
Page 15 of 16
 Medium Force Stats

Figure 2.4

High Force Stats

Figure 2.5

time-wingsize graph
1.8 1.71

1.6
1.36
1.4 1.25 1.21
1.2 1.09 1.05
time/s

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
WingSize/cm2

Figure 3.1 Page 16 of 16