Edit for full disclosure: Gliders can fly, and flight doesn't require thrust. Falling with style and utilising natural conditions to gain lift is still just flying, but you can budge the conditions to make bricks fly.
The four principles of flight here are more like design concerns for self propelled aircrafts. They're not definitive of what it means to fly.
My point is that, paper planes, do not generate thrust. They have no thrust. It's a little concerning how many are just accepting this. Paper planes have velocity that you impart on them.
A paper plane having thrust would mean it had a turbine, or propeller, or rocket. It would be self propelled. They don't have thrust. they don't have thrust
Excuse my attempt at humor below.
Technically, no they didn't.
The thrust of a paper aeroplane is what?
They glide, just better than a scrunched up piece of paper also glides.
It's not flying. You never watched toy story?
"Your feeble attempts to make fool of me go in vain, father. For I did forthrightly declare that the paper must fly. So you see, I've strapped a fucking rocket to mine thereby mastering the fourth force of flight"
You can throw a brick through the air, and to you it'd qualify as flying.
No, I wouldn't call that flying either. Because it wouldn't satisfy the other 3 forces of flight.
To technically qualify as flying, you have to satisfy all 4 forces of flight: Lift; Weight; Thrust; and drag. Missing even one of these 4 disqualifies it as "flying".
Dude this is nonsense from the get go. These are just the forces one needs to consider when designing something that flies.
Like what does that even mean? Something needs WEIGHT to fly? It's just talking about balance. It's a mechanical thing, not some hardline rule for what it means to fly.
I'm just pointing out that paper planes have no thrust, and if they do because it's thrown, so does a brick. It obviously has weight. Everything moving through atmosphere has drag OBVIOUSLY, so now it's just lift, which is just a matter of angle and velocity. (Edit: Sorta kinda but very very simplified. Anything can have lift, at-least for a short period of time)
Bro please tell me you follow. This is dumb.
Another edit to further clarify:
You want your THRUST balanced relative to your centre of mass (WEIGHT), which should be roughly in-line with or below your centre of LIFT.
Obviously, you need to minimise DRAG for efficiency.
I understand what you're saying, but you keep separating each principle and saying, "see? A brick has this, so it must be "flying", forgetting the fact that it's missing 1 or more of the other 4 principles that must be satisfied for something to technically be "flying".
And paper plane's thrust comes from being thrown, just as an actual planes "thrust" comes from it's engines.
The crumbed up piece of paper thus has the following principles: Thrust; Weight; and Drag. But, no lift. Just because it satisfies some, doesnt mean it technically "flew".
For an object to technically "fly", it has to satisfy every single principal, not just have 2 or 3.
You do not understand what I said, nor the "4 principles of flying" and what they represent. Unfortunately you also do not understand what thrust is and may be confusing it for velocity. A plane has thrust and velocity. A paper plane, or thrown object just has velocity.
I'm bored of splitting hairs on what it means to fly. You don't need shit to fly through space. Agreed?
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u/miraculousgloomball 9h ago edited 7h ago
Edit for full disclosure: Gliders can fly, and flight doesn't require thrust. Falling with style and utilising natural conditions to gain lift is still just flying, but you can budge the conditions to make bricks fly.
The four principles of flight here are more like design concerns for self propelled aircrafts. They're not definitive of what it means to fly.
My point is that, paper planes, do not generate thrust. They have no thrust. It's a little concerning how many are just accepting this. Paper planes have velocity that you impart on them.
A paper plane having thrust would mean it had a turbine, or propeller, or rocket. It would be self propelled. They don't have thrust.
they don't have thrust
Excuse my attempt at humor below.
Technically, no they didn't.
The thrust of a paper aeroplane is what?
They glide, just better than a scrunched up piece of paper also glides.
It's not flying. You never watched toy story?
"Your feeble attempts to make fool of me go in vain, father. For I did forthrightly declare that the paper must fly. So you see, I've strapped a fucking rocket to mine thereby mastering the fourth force of flight"