Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance | Hacker News Reader

Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance

jalopnik.com

44 pointsgmays28 comments

Video not available...so

> As you can see, the planes are meant to be more darts than traditional paper planes, and there is little, if any, gliding. Ruble’s tosses are all about brute strength and how far he can toss it, in addition to launch angle, which the team says optimally is around 40 degrees

This feels like they should change the rules if they want to keep this as a "paper plane" competition rather than a "paper throwing dart" competition.

One of the simplest methods of beating most decent planes is the crumple it into a ball and throw it method.

I won a contest in high school like that. Everyone in class was given a number of random things with instructions to build a paper airplane that flew as far as possible. We didn't have to use everything, but we could only use the components provided.

From memory, there was a small block of sticky tack, a roll of transparent tape, four or five pieces of paper, and a couple of paper clips.

Everyone else made various traditional paper airplanes; a few people used the paper clips to good effect to adjust the center of gravity to get a longer glide slope. I just wadded everything up into a piece of paper, wrapped the other pieces paper around it, and wrapped the whole thing in transparent tape (which I had already removed from the core, because the core was inside the ball).

I just threw it as hard as I could, and it ended up going more than twice as far as anyone's paper airplanes. It probably helped that we were competing outside and throwing into a gentle breeze.

People hate this kind of creative problem-solving. I once won a statewide competition for designing an electromagnet by selecting a core material which was already magnetic and simply aligning the winding's polarity to enhance the existing field. Nothing in the rules forbade this, and my (electro)magnet lifted the most. There was much gnashing of teeth.

I mean, I don't hate it, but it's not innovative in the way it suggests it is. "There's nothing in the rules that says a dog can't play basketball." Yeah, but like, what are we achieving with it. Part of the fun of designing within constraints is figuring out different limits. I will say I often enjoy these "thinking outside the box" attempts the first time, but that after that initial thought, it's worth rewriting the rules, because you can only get so much out of consistently thinking outside the box in the same way.

"How far can a human launch a projectile?" is a different question from "how far can you throw a paper plane?" I'm okay with both of them being competitions, but they are meaningfully different and drive meaningfully different outcomes.

> Part of the fun of designing within constraints

In this example there were constraints, and they were designed within. You just don't like the result.

no, it's like when someone is following the law to the letter but not the spirit of the law. Aka finding a loophole. No one will laud this.

In this instance I'd say it's funny and a bit creative, but way less creative than the other participants trying to build actual paper planes.

I think all this achieve is proving to the people who wrote the rules they made a mistake. Rules will hopefully be updated, so value is not zero, but it's not really what the spirit of the competition was about.

The only instance I admire this thinking is when the "wrong" rules are not written by humans but rather preexistent. If someone manage to find out the understanding we had of the rules was wrong and finds a quicker solution because of it, that's amazing.

I didn't say I didn't like the result. In fact, I think I explicitly stated that I enjoy this kind of "out of the box" thinking, the first time.

Remember the time I beat the Kobayashi Maru?

Or, student wins paper airplane contest with paper rock.

Haha

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

How do you make a distinction?

Planes could arguably be considered a type of dart.

Does it generate lift? If no, then its not an airplane

I'd love to see a gliding competition for distance or time based on A4 paper airplanes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbh1cNA0W2A

I read that "88.318 meters" as 88 kilometers and was kinda impressed. then I realized they use periods has commas.

Haha or we'd say you use periods as commas :-)

For others who don't know, for me (American), a period means a decimal value and a comma separates between thousands. I think in some parts of Europe it's the opposite, where the period separates thousands and the comma means a decimal value.

It gets even more funky here in Europe... "In Germany, it is a period (.). Thus one thousand and twenty-five is displayed as 1,025 in the United States and 1.025 in Germany. In Sweden, the thousands separator is a space"[1]

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/locale/numbe...

And since, in both US and EU, in written sentences a comma is a somewhat optional boundary between continuations of a phrase, while period is a full stop also called a point, and since on a number line the zero point is that full stop point between positive and negative while successive orders of magnitude 1000s, 1000000s, etc. are only optionally delimited ...

... this is the one difference between EU and US numbering and units where EU is just wrong. :-)

Edit: I see below the Swedes are even more wrong. Bork bork bork!

It is not EU vs US. Countries have different norms. In France for instance the thousand separator is a simple space, no comma or dot. And the reason for the comma instead of the dot comes from mathematics to avoid confusion with the multiplication sign · when writing.

Canada also uses a space as a thousands separator, while English Canada uses a decimal point and French Canada uses a decimal comma. The use of a space as a thousands separator is explicitly to reduce confusion and ambiguity.

> the reason for the comma instead of the dot comes from mathematics to avoid confusion with the multiplication sign · when writing

I've heard that, but I think it's trying to back into a rationale since it makes no sense, people do multiply by 3 digit numbers.

FWIW, when I was in grade school in France, no, we didn't separate thousands by space. Then again, my school was on the border with Switzerland, so *shrug* who knows!?!

IMO the European(?) convention makes sense insofar as the higher-level separator is visually more prominent.

Can we maybe just agree on using underscores as a thousands separator?

It's saying here that the YouTube video is private. Is the video available somewhere else?

That explain a lot of things ^^

Now they can str working on keeping their real airplanes in the air

If only they could make real planes again. They've pushed the 747 as far as it goes, and anything new can't fly because it was outsourced to the cheapest hell hole and back.

I can understand "cheapest" but why "hell hole". Are you trying to say countries like India, Vietnam, etc, only have bad engineers? Or do you mean the organizations that employ them use very harsh practices, or are you calling out the entire country? Depending on your stance, you are either being racist or talking with limited knowledge. I suggest you watch this.

https://youtu.be/naopd2d_dCM

The actual hellhole is the bean counters in Boeing, who willfully ignored a lot of things.

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