How to Fold the 'Tube' Paper Airplane | WIRED

[Music] this odd looking machine is called the tube that is quite a paper airplane it spins as it flies it gets its directional stability from how quickly that it's spinning but more importantly that's how it derives its lift from how fast it's spinning special boundary layer effect little gobs of air get stuck on all the tiny imperfections microscopic imperfections in the surface of this plane and the faster it spins the more it can interact with the surrounding air and develop lift the upshot is as it's spinning this way it can shove enough air off of that side lift it up like that so because it's moving forward through the air like that so very interesting aircraft round paper airplane the center of gravity is right there it's not even in not even touching the plane it's in the middle of all that center of gravity in the middle thin air and so to fold it we're going to start with an eight and a half by 11 sheet and start with the long side up we're going to fold down one third and one third means that the layered part is going to be the same length as the unlayered part and it's okay if the layered part is a little bit bigger and so to make sure that you're folding straight get this edge and this edge lined up and start in the middle and sweep to the outside and there's one third fold it over and you'll notice that's you know visually you can see that's a little bit bigger than that which is that's okay it's actually preferable to have that a little bit bigger so don't don't sweat the one-third thing you don't have to whip out the ruler and do any of that crazy stuff just get get about a third over there now we're going to fold the layer part in half bringing the top down to that what used to be the top edge of the paper make a nice sharp crease again starting in the center and working our way out and one more time we're going to fold the layered part in half right here just right through there if you started with anything thicker than 20lb paper your fingers are going to get a real workout on this one so let's roll that over one more time folding the layered part in half take your time and line it up try to control those layers it's a lot of layers to control and sweeping to the outside and making a sharp crease we're going to do something extraordinary here to sharpen this crease we're going to pick it up on this camera over here and we're going to roll it over the edge of the table to sharpen the crease and we're just going to work it back and forth the smooth side of the paper is up uh the layered part is down nothing against the layer part right over the corner of the table makes a great satisfying sound and now it's going to stand up you can see it's going to stand up just like a little tunnel there you can reach right under it standing up nicely now the trick here let's flip it over so that we have the curved side up we're going to unfold just the last time we fold it in half the last time we did that and i want you to come down here um to the right-hand side of the plane and we're just going to lift up this corner here um it's it's layered you can see there's a loop of paper here little loop of paper there and i want you to put a finger inside there like that so we're separating the two corners here the two single layer corners and there's a double layer corner on top so you're just going to put a finger inside there like that and then grab the other end we're going to wrap the other end around and put it right inside there just like that and we're going to put it in there about that much yeah it's a little bit more than an inch maybe an inch and a half you know one thumb width almost uh one and a half thumb widths kind of an idea so again i made that look really easy and i know it's not [Laughter] so i'm gonna lift this top layer here there's a single layer on either you get a short single layer and a long single layer on one side and i'm going to just put my finger in there just to hold that open we've got a double layer there that's got a corner that's a crease right there so you have two layers and two layers and we're just going to pick this other end up roll it around and put it inside there where our finger is and slide it in you know inch and a half or so and then hang on to it once you get it together hang on to it because what we're going to do to lock this plane together is follow that crease all the way around that we unfolded so what i like to do is start here hold on to it where the where the layers overlap where you put it one inside the other and push it down right there i like to reach up inside here with a finger and just kind of hold that crimp that down like that that'll help you as you're remaking the crease and this is gonna get ugly i'm warning you now it's gonna get ugly here we go it's getting ugly it's getting really ugly it's getting very ugly and then suddenly when you get all the way around there it starts to get beautiful look at that it goes from very ugly to very beautiful in just just a moment like that and now we're going to push in just so you can see i'm rounding it out just by going around there smoothing it out and it becomes really kind of an extraordinary circle here okay let's flip it over this is the heavy side up with all the layers there you can see all the layering right there let's turn it over just briefly here right here is what we're going to fix next this is the tail of the plane it's popping open there a little bit i don't like that some people leave that open you can leave that open if you want it will affect the flight i feel like it adds a little bit of drag so what i'm going to do is just go around that edge about i don't know two three millimeters you know something like a little bit less than a quarter of an inch i'm just going to go all the way around the back of the plane just moving that to the inside and then just kind of pinching it to smooth that out and that really looks a lot better holds together a lot better it's going to be smoother through the air there's your tube now there's no real adjusting here this is it there's no control surfaces you're going to throw it and it's going to rotate like that you're going to throw it let it roll off your fingertips if you've ever thrown a spiral football that's kind of what you're going for so if you've never thrown a spiral football it's actually kind of easy to learn how to do it with this tube start by throwing it like this and just giving it some backspin and don't worry about how far it's going just worry about developing a good amount of spin just like that and you know throw it a few times so that you're kind of getting the hang of it imparting some good spin here and once you got the hang of making it spin just turn your wrist like this same kind of motion down like that and let it go that way and so that's a good way to learn how to throw this guy and you can give it a fairly hard toss it really likes a really good solid throw give it a lot of spin really hard throw and you wrap your finger around it where the thick part is don't do it here with us it'll squish on you but get up here where the thick part is wrap your finger around it and then really give it a good hard spin and a good hard throw it should zip out there 60 70 feet no problem uh it's a great indoor plane it's a little bit crazy to throw outdoors you can't really tell what it's doing sometimes it gets caught in the wind and does crazy things really fun plane to learn how to make extraordinary to learn how to fly it's the tube you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 352,270

Rating: 4.8548875 out of 5

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Id: faR8b9DTZ1A

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020