The Paper Pilots

Since 2008, after a trip to the World Paper Plane Championships, James Norton (Time Aloft) & Dylan Parker (Distance) have built educational programs and experiences aimed at inspiring teachers to bring STEM fundamentals to life and students to ask the question ‘How do things fly?’. What better way to do it than through their love for paper planes?

Paper planes can be used as a powerful educational tool to achieve outcomes in the Australian National Curriculum throughout both primary and secondary schools. It’s also a great resource for adults to brush up on fundamentals to create fun experiences for children around the following topics:

• FORCES — Lift, drag, thrust, gravity, contact and non-contact forces.
   
• FLIGHT IN NATURE — Adaptations, evolutionary flight traits and biomimicry.
   
• EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS — Collect data and detect patterns in results.
   
• TYPES OF PAPER PLANES — The categories of paper planes and how to ‘test, learn, adapt’ to improve how they fly.

Dylan Parker
Dylan’s the ‘Distance Guy’, ready to fly fast and far. In 2008 he took his
plane ‘The Jindivik’ to the World Paper Plane championships where he
placed 3rd with a mighty throw. During his training to become a PAPER
PILOT he underwent surgery to remove a golf-ball sized tumour and used
Paper Planes as his recovery exercise — a great sport to choose!

James Norton
James is the ‘Time Aloft’ specialist on the team, he launches at speed in a
near vertical spiral and floats gracefully to the ground. He’s the acrobatics
fanatic and at one with nature – many of his planes feature adaptations from
birds, insects and even whales! He’s the 10th best flyer in the world, only
because he flew so high he hit the roof!