Experiments With Paper Airplanes Reveal Surprisingly Complex Aerodynamics

upstart writes:

How these gliders keep level flight is different from the stability of airplanes:

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."

[...] An amusing "scientist playing with paper planes" anecdote comes from physicist Theodore von Karman. In his 1967 memoir The Wind and Beyond, he recalled a formal 1924 banquet in Delft, The Netherlands, where fellow physicist Ludwig Prandtl constructed a paper airplane out of a menu to demonstrate the mechanics of flight to von Karman's sister, who was seated next to him. When he threw the paper plane, "It landed on the shirtfront of the French minister of education, much to the embarrassment of my sister and others at the banquet," von Karman wrote.

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