Science Communication:

Our airplane experiment: Make paper airplanes with 3 different sizes of paper, each half the size of the past one then we measure the meters traveled to either accept or reject our hypothesis.

Hypothesis: If the paper airplane is smaller then it will travel further because lighter objects accelerate faster.

Data Analysis:

Airplane #1(size 1(largest)) average distance- 4.344m

Airplane #2(size 2) average distance- 6.622m

Airplane #3(size 3) average distance- 6.112m

After conducting the investigation, my group proved our hypothesis partially false. While the largest/heaviest paper plane did indeed travel the least distance, the smallest/lightest only came in second. We discovered that Airplane #2 which was half the size of Airplane 2 / twice the size of Airplane #3 traveled the furthest. This conclusion left us very confused as to why the results are the way they are. Our explanation is that weight of the airplane probably impacts the air resistance or the gravitational force. We are however sure that paper airplanes too big or too small don’t fly as far as the ones medium sized. If we are to ever conduct this experiment again, we would try this out in an open area with no lockers or nearby walls. There were a few times where the plane swerved and hit the wall which resulted in the tip bending. We did try to refold the paper to get rid of the bent tip however we do feel that the hit had still impacted the distance.