Production and Development

In our first professional practice lecture we were put into random groups of three, and then asked to create a paper airplane using the paper we were given at the start. we all designed separate paper airplanes drawing a design of it beforehand. The next step was to create the plane and throw them across the room to see how far they traveled. below is the first design of my airplane, (see Figure 1) it didn’t go very far before crashing into the ground. This was the same result for the other two group members and most groups apart from a couple. This then prompted us to back to the drawing board writing down what went wrong, look at our old designs and improve them. We then had to create a new paper airplane using a combination of ideas from all of us or create a completely new plane, we opted for a new plane.

For the second paper plane design we did some research online, this helped us understand what we did wrong, for example the tip of the plane is sharper, the wings are even and would help the plane glide through the air etc. This plane was a huge improvement on the last one and the results showed, it went much further then all three of our first attempts did.

To conclude, going back and making changes to your original design(s) can help massively, this was the same result for most groups in the lecture. (see figure 2).