When I first saw this, my first thought was to show it to my son – but at first not to let him in on how it works, just to see the baffled look on his face. “What kind of sorcery is this, Dad?”
I consider myself to be someone who has a pretty fair range of diverse knowledge, but if you had told me yesterday there was a way to make a paper airplane fly forever – and I mean forever – as if suspended by some magic spell, I would have wondered what the trick is.
But it’s not a trick. It’s simple science.
From ScienceDump:
The principal is the same as in real aviation: thermals. Thermals allow real sailplanes to fly for hours. As real thermals are too strong for our [self-made] paper airplane, we are using a miniature thermal that everyone has in his kitchen: Hotplates. Four hot plates producing hot air which rises and lets our [paper plane] fly as long as we want. The paper [airplane] must be centered while it performs its turns, in the middle of the [four] heating plates.
Watch:
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