Paper planes
MathXplosion 'Go fly a kite!' follow up
Watch the MathXplosion video 'Go fly a kite!' on the ABC Education website.
Watch the video to learn how to create your paper planes!
This is a follow up to the MathXplosion episode 'Go fly a kite!'
The videos were created with Olivia from Summer Hill PS, Michelle from Lake Heights PS, Kim from Mullumbimby PS and Kelly from Keiraville PS.
Transcript
Transcript coming soon.
Collect resources
You will need:
Paper for folding paper planes
Recording materials
What to do
Create your symmetrical paper plane.
To do this fold your piece of paper in half to create a line of symmetry.
To keep our planes symmetrical, each side of the centre fold line needs to be a mirror image. That means that any fold that we make on the right-hand side of the centre fold line needs to be mirrored on the left-hand side.
Create your asymmetrical paper plane.
To do this fold you piece of paper in half to create a line of symmetry. Fold one half of your paper in the exact same way as you did to create your symmetrical plane.
Fold the other half of your paper in a different way (so the two sides don’t match).
When you're ready, watch the next video.
What to do
Mathematicians know they need data to help them draw conclusions. So, we are going to use a table to collect some more data.
Draw your table.
Fly each plane 10 times and record results in your table.
When you're ready, watch the last video.
What to do
What do you notice in the data you collected? Did one plane fly further more often than the other plane? Did you notice anything interesting? Record you thinking in your workbook.
Does the conjecture that symmetry is important to help things fly hold true?