[pleasant music]
- This odd looking machine is called the tube.
[laughing]
That is quite a paper airplane.
It spins as it flies.
It gets its directional stability
from how quickly that it's spinning.
But more importantly, that's how it derives its lift,
from how fast it's spinning.
The special boundary layer effect,
the little gobs of air gets stuck
in all the tiny imperfections, microscopic imperfections
in the surface of this plain,
and the faster it spins, the more it can interact
with the surrounding air and develop lift.
The upshot is as it's spinning this way,
it can shove enough air off of that side
and lift it up like that,
so because it's moving forward through the air like that.
So very interesting aircraft.
Round paper airplane.
The center of gravity is right there.
It's not even in not even touching the plane.
It's in the middle of all that.
Center of gravity in the middle, boop, thin air.
And so to fold it we're gonna start
with an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet.
I'm gonna start with the long side up.
We're gonna fold down 1/3.
And 1/3 means that the layered part's gonna be
the same length as the unlayered part.
And it's okay if the layered part is a little bit bigger.
And so to make sure that you're folding straight,
get this edge and this edge lined up
and start in the middle and sweep to the outside.
And there's 1/3 folded over.
And you'll notice that's you know,
visually you can see that's a little bit bigger than that,
which is that's okay.
Actually preferable to have that a little bit bigger.
So don't sweat the 1/3 thing.
You don't have to whip out the ruler
and do any of that crazy stuff.
Just get about a third over there.
Now we're gonna fold the layered part in half,
bringing your top down to that what used to be
the top edge of the paper.
Make a nice, sharp crease,
again, starting in the center and working our way out.
And one more time, we're gonna fold
the layered part in half.
Right here, just right through there.
If you started with anything thicker than 20 pound paper,
your fingers are gonna get
a real workout on this one. [laughs]
So let's roll that over one more time,
folding the layer part in half.
Take your time and line it up.
Try to control those layers.
It's a lot of layers to control.
And sweeping to the outside and making a sharp crease.
We're gonna do something extraordinary here
to sharpen this crease.
We're gonna pick it up on this camera over here,
and we're gonna roll it over the edge of the table
to sharpen the crease and we're just gonna work it
back and forth.
The smooth side of the paper is up,
the layered part is down.
Rubbing against the layered part
right over the corner of the table.
Makes a great satisfying sound.
[paper scratching]
[laughing]
And now it's gonna stand up.
You can see it's gonna stand up
just like a little tunnel there.
You can reach right under it.
Standing up nicely.
Now the trick here, let's flip it over
so that we have the curved side up.
We're gonna unfold just the last time we folded it in half,
the last time we did that.
And I want you to come down here to the right hand side
of the plane and we're just gonna lift up this corner here.
It's layered.
You can see there's a loop of paper here.
A little loop of paper there.
I want you to put a finger inside there like that.
So we're separating the two corners here,
the two single layer corners,
and there's a double layer corner on top.
So we're just gonna put a finger inside there like that
and then grab the other end.
We're gonna wrap the other end around
and put it right inside there,
just like that.
And we're gonna put it in there about that much.
Yeah, it's a little bit more than an inch,
maybe an inch and a half.
You know, one thumb width.
Almost a 1 1/2 thumb widths kind of an idea.
So again, I made that look really easy and I know it's not.
[laughing]
So I'm gonna lift this top layer here.
There's a single layer on either,
you got a short single layer and a long single layer
on one side, and I'm gonna put just put my finger in there
just to hold that open.
You got a double layer there that's got a corner.
That's a crease right there.
So if you have two layers and two layers
and we're just going to pick this other end up,
roll it around and put it inside there
where finger is and slide it in,
you know, inch and a half or so, and then hang on to it.
Once you get it together, hang on to it.
Because what we're gonna do to lock this plane together
is follow that crease all the way around that we unfolded.
So what I like to do is start here, hold on to it.
Where the layers overlap, where you put it
one inside the other and push it down right there.
I like to reach up inside here with a finger
and just kind of hold that, crimp that down like that.
That'll help you as you're remaking the crease
and this is gonna get ugly.
I'm warning you now, it's gonna get ugly.
Here we go.
It's getting ugly.
It's getting really ugly.
It's getting very ugly.
And then suddenly when you get all the way around there,
it starts to get beautiful.
Look at that.
It goes from very ugly to very beautiful.
And just, just a moment like that.
And now we're going to push in just so you can see
I'm rounding it out just by going around there,
smoothing it out and it becomes,
and really, kind of an extraordinary circle here.
Okay. Let's flip it over.
This is the heavy side up with all the layers there.
You can see all the layering right there.
Let's turn it over just briefly here.
Right here is what we're gonna fix next.
This is the tail of the plane.
It's popping up in there a little bit.
I don't like that.
Some people leave that open.
You can leave that open if you want.
It will affect the flight.
I feel like it adds a little bit of drag.
So what I'm gonna do is just go around that edge
about mm, I don't know, two, three millimeters,
you know, something like a little bit less
than a quarter of an inch.
And I'm just gonna go all the way around
the back of the plane, just moving that to the inside.
And then just kind of pinching it to smooth that out.
And that really looks a lot better.
Holds together a lot better.
It's going to be smoother through the air.
There's your tube.
Now there's no real adjusting here. [laughs]
This is it.
There's no control surfaces.
You're going to throw it
and it's gonna rotate like that.
You're gonna throw it, let it roll off your fingertips.
If you've ever thrown a spiral football,
that's kind of what you're goin' for.
So if you've never thrown a spiral football,
it's actually kind of easy to learn
how to do it with this tube.
Start by throwing it like this
and just giving it some backspin.
And don't worry about how far it's going.
Just worry about developing a good amount of spin,
just like that, and you know,
throw it a few times so that you're kind of
getting the hang of it, imparting some good spin here.
And once you got the hang of making it spin,
just turn your wrist like this.
Same kind of motion.
Down like that and let it go that way.
And so that's a good way to learn
how to throw this guy and you can give it
a fairly hard toss.
It really likes a really good solid throw.
Give it a lot of spin, really hard throw
and wrap your finger around it where the thick part is,
don't do it here with a, it'll squish on ya,
but get up here where the thick part is,
wrap your finger around it
and then really give it a good hard spin
and a good heart throw.
It should zip out there, 60, 70 feet, no problem.
It's a great indoor plane.
It's a little bit crazy to throw out door.
You can't really tell what it's doing.
Sometimes it gets caught in the wind.
It does crazy things.
A really fun plane to learn how to make,
extraordinary to learn how to fly.
It's the tube.
[pleasant music]