Informative Essay On Paper Airplanes

Students are sitting in a classroom absolutely bored and they receive a random hand out that no one really wants. So most of these pieces of paper either end up in the trash, or they end up as a paper airplane flying around the halls of the school. As common as a paper airplane may be not many people know about the origin, the achievements, or the aerodynamics of paper airplanes. The history of the paper airplane is challenging to follow because no one for sure knows where the paper airplane originated from. Many people believe that the paper airplane originated in ancient China, because the Chinese used paper to create kites (Paper Plane Mafia).Others say that Leonardo Da Vinci could have first created the paper airplane because he discovered that air resisted motion (Paper Plane Mafia). However, the person accredited with making the first paper airplane was George Cayley (Paper Plane Mafia). Even though Cayley’s creation does not look like a proper paper airplane, it is still considered the first paper airplane.

On December 10, 2010, Takuo Toda threw a paper airplane that flew for 29.2 seconds resulting in the longest time a paper airplane has ever flown (Guinness World Records). Although Toda’s paper airplane flew for 29.2 seconds it is not the farthest a paper airplane has been flown. A little more than a year later, on February 26, 2012, Joe Ayoob threw a paper airplane, designed and made by John Collins, a total of 226 feet and 10 inches (Live Science Staff). The largest paper airplane was built a year later in Braunschweig, Germany (Guinness World Records). This monstrous paper airplane was 16.92 feet long, 3.34 feet wide, 3.01 feet tall, and almost weighed 53 pounds (Guinness World Records). All of these insane achievements begs one question. How do paper airplanes