TEP Talk: Exploring the Physics of Flight

April in Atlanta means people are finally getting out and about, moving and shaking, and quite honestly, starting to hit the workouts hard for those soon-to-be summer bodies. Movement around the city has been quite abuzz as of late, especially with the recent release of the vaccine to the general public. In honor of all the activity, we wanted to host a Spring Fling of sorts, centered around a few of our favorite things: physics, frisbees, and of course, food.

Set out to provide Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) Social Club members a much-deserved mid-week break, we headed over to Technology Enterprise Park (TEP) the last week of April to get our community outside in the fresh air, enjoy the beautiful spring weather, and engage in discussion and competition centered around frisbees, paper airplanes, and the physics of flight.

To get things in motion, we turned the courtyard of TEP into a physics-themed field day, complete with free franks, provided by fan-favorite, Fox Dogs, frisbee golf, and of course, an airplane launcher. Of course, being the nerds we so proudly are, all of our festivities had to do with Newton’s Laws of Motion:

Newton’s First Law: Inertia
- An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at a constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
Newton’s Second Law: Force
- The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
Newton’s Third Law: Action & Reaction
- Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

For the airplane launcher competition, attendees were able to select the launch angle degree of their choosing in order to win a prize for the longest distance. From 61.5 degrees to 86.3 degrees, contestants maneuvered the launcher setup accordingly and watched their plane take flight. Abbott’s very own Janet Easley was the triumphant winner of a $25 gift card that day, launching her plane an astonishing 18 feet (six feet more than the second-longest distance!) at an angle of 78.9 degrees.

In comparison, we did a quick analysis of all participants’ recordings and uncovered there is a linear correlation present, with a Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (R) equaling 0.26:

Angle (Degrees)

Average Launch Angle: 73.9

Max Angle: 86.3

Min Angle: 61.5

Winning Angle: 78.9

Distance (Feet)

Average Distance: 8.3

Max Distance: 18

Min Distance: 5

Winning Distance: 18

Correlation Coefficient: 0.26

This shows that there is indeed a positive correlation between angle and distance, while simultaneously confirming that other unbalanced forces, such as wind, for example, were at work. This directly ties back to Newton's First Law, as outlined previously. In layman’s terms, the launch angle definitely impacts the distance, but there are other factors at play that impact distance as well.

At the build your own paper airplane challenge station, community members were instructed to do the following in order to win a separate prize of a gift card of their choosing

Make/fold paper airplane
Write name/email on paper airplane
Throw paper airplane
Record distance on paper airplane and turn into the TSQATL team

Lo and behold, we had yet another Abbott winner that fateful day, Debra Brown. Her homemade airplane flew six feet! While it was a third of the distance of Janet’s, keep in mind that Debra had no mechanism propelling her paper plane – just her crafty ingenuity and engineering skills hard at work.

And for those not as much in the spirit of competition, disc golf and Kan Jam were made available on the lawn for all to play, while others simply enjoyed chatting up colleagues while chowing down on some tasty treats.