Saturday STEM Challenge: Folding a Paper Cargo Plane
This week we’re looking at different aspects of flight and ways that we can explore those at home.
When planes were first being designed and invented, they were light vehicles that could only carry a few people. Today, with improved technology, planes can carry hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Here, a plane is flying with the Shuttle Enterprise, which is about 165,000 pounds, on top of it. Image via NASA.
So how are planes able to carry so much weight and still stay in flight?
As we’ve seen earlier this week, the two forces that allow an airplane to fly are lift and thrust. For more thrust, jumbo jets have a greater number and more powerful jet engines. For more lift, large planes have wider and longer wings.
Image via Businessinsider.com
For example, the largest cargo plane in the world is the Antonov 225. Notice that each wing is very wide, and the plane has a total of six jet engines. With these wings and engines, the plane is able to carry over 550,000 pounds (about 275 tons) of cargo. Recently, it was used to bring 200 tons of medical supplies from China to Poland to help fight COVID-19.
Now let’s get to this week’s STEM challenge: folding a paper cargo plane. Using a sheet of paper, you want to fold a paper airplane that will glide ten feet (i.e. you can’t just throw it that distance) while carrying as much weight as possible. Taping quarters to the top of your plane is a good way to add weight.
Here are a set of instructions for a basic paper airplane design:
Keep in mind, though, that this design is meant to fly far, but not necessarily carry weight as it flies. We were able to carry 8 quarters with this design. How many can your plane carry? How can you tweak this design to carry more weight? Can you think of another paper airplane design that will carry as many quarters as possible?
