Designing, folding, and flying the finest paper airplanes [video]

Designing, folding, and flying the finest paper airplanes [video](wired.com)

115 points by farnsworthy 8 years ago | 11 comments

lisper 8 years ago |

Some historically interesting links along the same lines:

https://lifehacker.com/181548/build-the-worlds-best-paper-ai...

The first comment is particularly interesting. I have a very clear recollection of seeing the followup to the 60 Minutes episode he talks about. Back then, they would read snippets of letters they received from viewers at the end of the show. After the paper airplane episode (which I did not see, but wish I could find a video of) someone wrote, "You dummies! Show us how to fold the damn thing!" Which they then proceeded to do. Very, very quickly. Following the procedure in real time was hopeless, and this was back in the days when VCRs were still exotic new technology. We did not have one. But the memory of hearing Harry Reasoner (I'm pretty sure it was him) reading that snippet has stuck in my brain all these years.

If anyone can lay their hands on a copy of either one of these episodes that would be really awesome.

agumonkey 8 years ago |

parts of my brain lit up just remember the feeling of paper again my fingers while folding creases in primary school.

it's super cool to see his semi physical approach between momentum/lift etc. Makes me wonder how much you could get by adding a few bits of metal/rubber in the design (even minuscule but functional bits)

Also youtube has a lot of paper plane competitions in Japan. Fun to watch, less explanations(npi) but some involved fluid dynamics ground effect.

2muchcoffeeman 8 years ago | |

I am sure most kids figured this out.

I used to add a small paper clip to the nose of my planes. I also used to have these cheap styrofoam planes where you punched the parts out of a sheet and slotted them together. Those had plastic push on noses.

I never thought much about my designs but thinking back the behaviour makes so much sense now.

agumonkey 8 years ago | | |

We used to weigh the nose up too, but without thinking about center of gravity and oscillation. We were 6yo it wasn't very clear what was going on for us even though I find it interesting that:

- we could iterate hundreds of time with joy - it seems like a stupid kid thing but it's quite subtle and technical, if approached so

Kids have this pseudo researcher mindset that only lacks a few symbolic notions to really leap across toying to understanding.

newnewpdro 8 years ago | | |

Used staples in mine... would keep adding more until it flew in a balanced fashion, also helped keep tight the fold-heavy front.

farnsworthy 8 years ago |

"After going about as far as I could go folding planes, I decided I need to study this other field, this art called 'Origami.' So I worked on that for about ten years..."

socialist_coder 8 years ago |

Very cool video. Awesome how he took the world record with a "real" plane instead of just a dart.

deckar01 8 years ago |

Anyone have an alternate source? This Wired video player crashes Chrome on my iPhone.

deckar01 8 years ago | |

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z5msJXVv918

vanderZwan 8 years ago | | |

And these are the Wired videos from last week, which presumably are embedded in the site of the submission (which is also broken for me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BNg4fDJC8A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhYZy1ugI3Q

wheresmyusern 8 years ago |

i appreciate the effort to make video content accepted here on hn, but this is not video content that i think should be on the front page. this is flat out not very intellectually interesting.