Paper Airplane Wind Tunnel

This should work right? This is one of those ideas like getting all of the passengers on an airplane to jump at the same time and make the plane drop a significant amount. It kinda seems plausible.

It Works!!

I want to find out. I tweeted this picture out and Twitter user @kelnishi told me to pack straws around the grill of the fan to create laminar flow. Genius!

I didn't have duct tape. Also, that's my cat, Vigo the Carpathian. He has to be there when I'm doing something. It can't be helped. I turned on the fan and it blew air through the straws. The plan was working. Now I had to make some paper airplanes.

There is of course only one guy to get the best airplane design from: John Collins, his. hair. is. glorious!

I got some pieces of copy paper out and made predictions.

Test #1. This will not work. Results: Nope

Test #2, airplane uses the same paper and is 1/4 the size of the original. From here on out I am using the same piece of paper, just making it smaller and smaller.
Test #3, the tiniest one, it's getting blown around when I hold it up with the string. I think it needs to be longer or have a long tail piece to hold it up with the wind. I taped some long pieces and tested it. Nope. Now I'm working on the right airplane design. The Suzanne is great but it's not right for this project.

New data!!!!

My University has a Wind Tunnel. Bethsayswhat!!?? Oh it's on now.

We had our makerspace show and tell and even unsuccessful I brought my monstrosity to show off because I am all about collaboration. My project is OUR project. Everybody helps. Everybody gets credit.

Immediately people are folding airplanes, they got all the ideas for what will work and with fishing line, they do.

The winner was Dorian, he put the fishing line monofilament (fishing line) on at just the right spot and it floated. Supercool. Now to continue to experiment and make the airplanes match my drawing.

This is me at show and tell.

More pictures.

Other people are more successful at this than me. Yay. The next day we hosted some YMCA kids and they were awesome. I showed them the fan. There were two standouts. One got her paper airplane to float a bit before falling, amazing. A boy got his to do a trick. It spiraled then fell. What. The. Hell. That was not the plan. These two kids not only crushed it but topped my picture. They outdid me hands down. I told them too. High fives. No video or pictures because this was last minute and couldn't get permission beforehand.

I added tails to the ends. It's perfect. I did have to adjust the fan and the U frame to get them both just right. Is it called constructive interference? Hypothesis: Any kid would still do this better, faster and more creatively a job of this than me...

I added more tail. Decreasing returns. Now it looks like I caught something. I caught a Petunia. I thought about getting enough straws for a big box fan but here's the thing, I saw that video of the sea turtle with a straw in its nose. I know about the goal to get rid of all plastic straws minus some for disability groups. Would I be contributing to the problem?

Charles with different material.

We had Craft Lake City over the weekend and it wasn't ready but I couldn't find motors for the brushbots and we needed something interactive for people. Day 1 and we got nothing, no time to get anything. Day 2 and I'm listing off all the refinement this thing needs. I get talked into it though. But holy crap!!! People got their paper airplanes to work. This kid got his to fly. I took pictures of some of the successes!!!! I could only take a picture if the airplane was steady! Look looklooklook!!!!! I made him talk about it, it's basic airplane folding. The rest was a blur.

It works!!!! Now, the kids had pretty good sucess, the adults had some sucess. I think the grownups were overthinking it. The saturday of Craft Lake City one of our volunteers (pictured below) suggested we put a hole in the airplane where the person would throw the airplane, the center of gravity along the bottom. I spent some time trying to figure out a better solution that was easier to use and adjust.

Tucker did an amazing job with the nail holes and running this one for most of Saturday. And that's a pretty awesome airplane. Thanks man.

A simple design.

This is Sam, Tucker's older brother. He is on the borderline of overthinking it because he worked way too hard at this one but eventually got it working.

A typical reaction from the adult male who spent the entire encounter trash talking the airplane maker. Joy and ego in one picture. Both deserved. I died laughing every time.

"This is going to be a weird paper airplane". It was and it worked. High five kid. You rock.

Completely stabilized, possibly my fan needed to be stronger.

Future aeorspace engineer.

He had the best design which stayed up most of the time.

By then I'd upgraded to paperclips. I had time to think about what kind of device would be better than a hole in the airplane to attach to the monofiliment. Something on a small spring that when squeezed would release the airplane. I thought about going to a hardware store but didn't have time. I settled for an office supply store and bought some paper clips. The circular ones seem like they'd be perfect but they weren't. Regular ones were. Go figure.

This guy was hilarious. He signed his airplane and gave it to me.

For the record, I have not yet made a paper airplane that works.
My latest attempt and example of adults who overthink it. I found the design on Youtube.

Testing and Improvements

With a Turbo Fan and 1000 Straws

Onto the Utah Arts Festival!

This is Sam testing out some foam airplanes I bought. They were not right for this project. Too heavy. I bought a turbo fan from Home Depot and 1,000 boba straws. I had three rows of fishing line this time.