At some point in our lives, almost all of us have made a paper plane. But nobody has taken this childhood enterprise quite as seriously as these Boeing engineers.
Dillon Ruble and Garrett Jensen, both engineers at Boeing, broke a record in December that had only a little to do with their day jobs: They broke the record for farthest flight by a paper aircraft, sending a sheet of paper 88.318m, or almost 290 ft.
Here's what Boeing's press release said: Ruble and Jensen studied origami and aerodynamics for months, putting in 400 to 500 hours of creating different prototypes to try to design a plane that could fly higher and longer.
“For the Guinness World Records, we ended up going with A4-sized paper (dimensions of 210 x 297 mm) and went up to the maximum for weight, 100 grams per square meter,” Jensen said. “The heavier the paper, the greater the momentum when you go to throw it.”
It takes over 20 minutes to accurately fold the record-breaking paper airplane design.
“Our design is a little different from your traditional fold in half, fold the two corners to the middle line down the middle. It’s pretty unique in that aspect. It’s definitely an unusual design,” Ruble said.
On the day of the attempt, they achieved the record on the third throw.
So now you know!