Experiments with paper airplanes reveal surprisingly complex aerodynamics
Enlarge / Experiments with paper airplanes revealed new aerodynamic effects that enhance our current understanding of flight stability. (credit: RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images)
There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2022, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: new insights into the aerodynamics of paper airplanes reveal the key to smooth gliding.
Drop a flat piece of paper and it will flutter and tumble through the air as it falls, but a well-fashioned paper airplane will glide smoothly. Yet these seemingly simple structures involve surprisingly complex aerodynamics. Researchers at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences conducted a series of experiments involving paper airplanes to explore this transition and develop a mathematical model to predict flight stability, according to a March paper published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
The study started with simple curiosity about what makes a good paper airplane and specifically what is needed for smooth gliding," said co-author Leif Ristroph. "Answering such basic questions ended up being far from child's play. We discovered that the aerodynamics of how paper airplanes keep level flight is really very different from the stability of conventional airplanes."