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In fourth grade we had a paper airplane contest, but they had a restriction on the design: a circle about the size of a quarter was on the page, and no fold or
by mod 4y ago
In fourth grade we had a paper airplane contest, but they had a restriction on the design: a circle about the size of a quarter was on the page, and no fold or crease could go through the circle.
The circle was located a few inches above the exact center of the paper.
Anyway I made a "dart", and just offset the angle a little to avoid the circle. It was good, and most of the competition was incredibly bad. And a few maybe had a bad launch. One throw only.
One clever design was submitted by a duo composed of my two worst nine year old enemies: Derek and Derek's sidekick. It was basically a UFO (saucer) made by carefully crumpling the edge until it was a nice size to throw. They threw it sidearm with one finger hooked around the rim.
It really sailed, maybe went twice as far as the second best plane: my plane.
But their plane was disqualified on the grounds that it wasn't a plane. So, I was deemed winner.
For the announcements the next morning, my name was announced as the wrong-gendered version (something like Jesse announced as Jessica) and it definitely didn't feel like a win anymore.
I still like paper airplanes, though.
- dylan604 4y ago>my name was announced as the wrong-gendered version that really sounds like the kind of thing a person might get stuck with through out their days in school. did this stick around for awhile, or was it mercifully a short lived thing?
- mod 4y agoHonestly, not that bad. Classmates openly laughed during announcements. The next day they issued a correction, which was worse than no correction. A few teases in the first week maybe, overall quite merciful.
- dylan604 4y agoI guess you had better friends that I did. I had a name "given" me that stuck all through school, and would probably still get mentioned by some of the asshats from back then.
- mcherm 4y agoReading that story, I feel bad for Derek. They thought outside the box, and came up with an objectively superior solution -- only to have it rejected for no reason other than the fact that they thought outside the box. On the surface, this sounds like a fabulous exercise: it requires some creative engineering thinking. But apparently, the way they addressed the winners left both of the top two teams feeling unsatisfied. Great exercise; poor execution.
- werds 4y ago#justiceforderek
- mod 4y agoI looked Derek up on Facebook and it seems he's living a good life. Beautiful wife, four kids, and seems like he coaches youth sports. He'll never have my blue ribbon, though.
- mod 4y agoI recognize injustice that his clever idea didn't win, but he was my worst enemy, so I disguised a smug grin while he pled his case to the judges.
- worthless-trash 4y agoSounds so scooby do, I love it.
- yreg 4y agoI was at a math camp where one of the activities was that each team had to design a paper plane and get it to a castle on top of a hill by throwing it the fewest times possible (like in golf). Several teams converged on a design of a crumbled ball of paper as that was what offered the best combination of accuracy and distance. Since there was no rule against it, we've allowed it. Some of the teams who played with conventional airplanes got furious. (These were all adult people!) Although innitially looking fairly innocent, I believe it ended up as the second most controversial activity we've held.
- michaelbuckbee 4y agoI'm aware of an even more efficient "hack" of the rules as different versions of this type of story are a mainstay of certain types of business courses where they want to try and teach a lesson of working together, delegation, cooperation, task specialization, etc. The most efficient way to move a stack of paper to a goal isn't to take each piece and do something to it (crumple/fold) but to just leave it together and heave the entire ream of paper. Note: this also frustrates the folks putting on the activity.
- kqr 4y agoLean consultant: the more efficient way is to move the goal to the stack of paper. Especially if the goal is just a defined point in space you can redefine it with no effort at all.
- Dove 4y agoI believe it was the great origami grandmaster Akira Yoshizawa who said, "Wet a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball, let it dry, and throw it hard. It will go quite far. A paper airplane must go farther, otherwise it might as well not be a paper airplane."
- farmin 4y agoI'll bite. What's the most controversial activity you have held at maths camp?
- rpaddock 4y agoSounds like an Aerobie? The inventor, when it was a new things years ago, submitted it to a Paper Airplane contest. The contests disqualified him because it was not an "Airplane". He argued A) It s made of paper (Cardboard from a Pizza Box), B) it flew (for very long distances), therefore it is a Paper Airplane. QED From experience I can tell you that A) They are attracted to trees, B) They swim like bricks (lost my first one in the first half hour to the local creek), C) They are very sensitive to thermal gradients. You can watch it ride up and over the finger tips of whomever you are playing with so it is just out of their reach. D) You need football size field, at a minimum, to paly with these. https://aerobie.com/en_us#our-story https://aerobie.com/en_us#our-story
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]