Other
Up to Ten: Make a Fleet of Paper Airplanes
"With just a few sheets of paper and colored pencils (or pens), you can make a whole fleet of paper airplanes from these plans."
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Experimenting With Paper Airplanes
Based off of the hit television show NUMB3RS, this "fun" lesson has students creating paper airplanes and testing different variables (weight, wings, etc.) to see what type of plane flies the best. Data Analysis and imagination are both...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Flight With Paper Airplanes
Students will experiment with different styles of paper airplanes, create questions to test, and design experiments that will allow them to gather data related to their question. They will record their data, using graphs where...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Take Off With Paper Airplanes
This lesson introduces students to the art of designing an airplane through paper airplane constructions. The goal is that students will learn important aircraft design considerations and how engineers must iterate their designs to...
Other
Ken Blackburn: Paper Airplanes
Information on paper airplane designs, history, and contests. Click on "Paper Airplane Aerodynamics" for an analysis of the world record holding paper airplane design.
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Exploring Paper
Learn how new materials, new methods and new ideas are transforming traditional origami. Watch videos of a master origami folder create his unique pieces. Learn how to make your own paper and how to fold your own paper airplanes.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Defining an Engineering Design Problem With Paper Airplanes
In this fun lesson, you will be the "customer" ordering a paper airplane, and your student teams will be engineering companies that will manufacture planes. Before they start making planes, they need to define the criteria and...
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Paper Airplanes
At this site students will use origami to fold a paper airplane that fly better than the classic dart airplane.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Up, Up and Away! Airplanes
The airplanes unit begins with a lesson on how airplanes create lift, which involves a discussion of air pressure and how wings use Bernoulli's Principle to change air pressure. Following the lessons on lift, students explore the other...
Read Works
Read Works: The Paper Airplane Contest
[Free Registration/Login Required] A literary text about a class that has a paper airplane contest. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
Other
Easy to Make Paper Airplanes
Have fun making different kinds of flying vehicles. You will learn how to make a paper airplane, helicopter, rocket, blimp, etc.
Purdue University
George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers
The world's largest collection of Amelia Earhart papers, memorabilia and artifacts.
Other
Federal Aviation Administration: How to Make a Compass [Pdf]
Learn what a compass is, how it works, and how you can create a simple one using a sewing needle, magnet, bowl of water, and a piece of paper.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Building a Paper Airplane Using Bernoulli's Principle
This is a culmination activity used after learners have studied Bernoulli's Principle as part of a unit on forces and fluids. Students will use the Internet, textbooks, library resources and their cooperative learning group to design...
Other
Lesson Plan Activities: Amelia Earhart and Airplanes
This site features several lesson ideas and activities on Amelia Earhart and airplanes for young learners.
Other
Symposium Papers: Following the Footstpes of the Wright Brothers
A compilation of symposium papers that have been presented on the Wright Brothers which includes details about their lives, invention, and historic flight.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Heads Up
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate some of the different parts of an airplane through the construction of a paper airplane. Students will build several different kinds of paper airplanes in order to figure out what makes an...
Discovery Education
Discovery Education: Inventors and Inventions 2: Air and Space
After discussing important flying inventions, students explore technological design by making paper airplanes.
Library of Congress
Loc: Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers
Over 49,000 digitized primary documents having to do with the Wright brothers and their work with flight. A timeline of the brothers' work, a family tree, and other special presentations are offered.
Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: Lab Activity: Aviation
This site from the Illinois Institute of Technology provides a student lab activity in which the flight of a paper airplane is investigated and studied. Designed for primary grades, but easily adaptable for junior high young scholars.
Michigan Reach Out
Reach Out!: Making Paper Airplane Gliders
Students learn the fundamentals of aerodynamics in this hands-on exercise.
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Kids Web Japan: Let's Try Origami
Animated step-by-step instructions show how to make a paper airplane. Colorful graphics make it easy for even very young learners to follow along with this fun paper-folding activity.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Why Winglets?
Make a paper airplane and experiment with adding winglets to it to test its performance. The Science Buddies project ideas are set up consistently beginning with an abstract, objective, and introduction, followed by a section on terms,...
Exploratorium
Exploratorium: Roto Copter
Students can experiment with a home-made helicopter that lets them change the blades to see how real aerodynamics work.