For our Paper Plane lab, me and my partner Kenya needed to answer the question “How does weight added to a paper plane effect the distance that plane can travel?”. To answer this question, we used the scientific method. First we created our hypothosis, that with more weight the distance travelled would increase, as the weight would add stability. We created a way to test this using paper clips to add weight. We found a paper plane design from wikihow (left), which said that it was a great design that would travel a long distance. Unfortunatly for us, the paper plane was not a good design and flew very inconsistantly, and did not fly at all the distance we expected it to. The results of the plane on the left were also very inconistent. With the least weight, the plane travelled the farthest, and the middle amount of weight the shortest, with the most amount of weight travelling the second farthest. Not only did this not match up with our hypothesis, it made no sense. Unsatisfied and confused with our results, we concluded that our design was the problem, and decided to try again.

With the last half hour of class time, Kenya and I created a new paper airplane (right), and re-did the tests, with the same materials from before, only a different paper plane. Our assumption that the design was the problem was correct, as the new design flew consistently and much further. We added the weight, and the results this time were much better. Like we had said in our hypothosis, the distance travelled increased as we added weight. We were very pleased with the results the second time around, and very glad that we had chosen to experiment with a new design.