500 Harris St UltimoPO Box K346 Haymarket NSW 1238Australia

Tel: 02 6217 0111http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

THE CRAFT TABLE

Make & Do Activity Kit

Paper helicopterEveryone knows how to make a paper plane, but how about a paper helicopter? This simple activity transformsa piece of paper into a spinning aircraft in a few easy steps.

Time: 15 minutesDifficulty:Hint: There are some interesting variationsto this activity on page 2 that you might like to try.

Cut along the solid lines marked with scissors (not forgetting the thinner solid lines marked with little scissors)

1.

Following the dotted lines, fold A towards you, and fold B away from you to create a crease. Now unfold to make helicopter blades sit horizontal as shown.

2.

Fold C behind E. Fold D behind E.

3.

Fold along dotted line E and fold tab behind.

4.

Attach a paper clip to the bottom of your helicopter.

5.

To fly your helicopter hold it by the paperclipped end and drop straight down from a height.

6.

• template (contains 3 helicopters)

• scissors• coloured A4 paper

What you will need:

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Page 2

500 Harris St UltimoPO Box K346 Haymarket NSW 1238Australia

Tel: 02 6217 0111http://play.powerhousemuseum.com

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

THE CRAFT TABLE

Make & Do Activity Kit

What’s going on?Why does the helicopter spin?

The helicopter is really an auto-gyro. As it falls, air pushes against the paper blades causing them to bend a bit. When air pushes upward on the slanted blade, some of that thrust becomes a sideways, or horizontal, push.

Because there are two blades, each getting the same push, but in opposite directions, the two opposing thrusts work together causing it to spin.

Paper helicopter

What else can i do?Next time you drop your helicopter, notice which direction it spins as it falls. Is it clockwise or anticlockwise?

Try bending the blades in the opposite directions (e.g. if blade A was bent toward you and blade B was bent away then, bend B toward you and A away).

Drop the copter again. Now which way does it spin?

Take out the paper clip from the bottom of your helicopter and compare how if flies with and without the paperclip.

Which one flys better?

Did you know?Igor Sikorsky designed the first successful helicopter in the late 1930s. His inspiration came from drawings of an aircraft with a spinning wing, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci nearly five hundred years before

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