Paper Projects

This term, and this year, some of my classmates and I got into paper construction and shape building. These projects are worth remembering and you should check them out. I have collected them (or the ones that are still [mostly] in working order) and put them on display. I have placed many projects on this table. I intend to go over them one by one.

First, we built the skyscraper. It didn’t get finished. It was one of the easiest projects, but it got very tedious. We didn’t end up finishing it because it didn’t have as high of a priority as some of the other ones. We might continue it next year, but I actually have no idea.

Next, we built a number of cannons. The cannons are no longer in working order, and I don’t have them here. The first cannon was built by connecting a paper air sack to a cardboard tube and then making a projectile that fit snugly in the tube. We built the air sack ourselves, and it was about three feet long and one and a half feet wide. The air sack was filled by pulling on four handles which we built out of paper, placing two on each side, and the projectile was then placed in the tube. Once this was all set up, the cannon was fired by someone squashing the bag flat extremely quickly, using the air pressure to blow the projectile out. This cannon shot approximately 20 ft and is no longer functioning. It died when the airbag popped after three months of use. This is a surprisingly long time, given the durability of paper. The next cannon was similar, except it used a bike pump as the air source, and used an airtight seal on the projectile to cause the cardboard tube to act as an air pressurizer, with the seal also acting as a way to keep the projectile in the tube. When the pressure reached about 60 psi, it would overcome the friction on the projectile, and fire at a range of up to 105 ft. I talk about the cannons so much more than the rest because you can’t see them here, and they have more complicated specifications than the rest

The next things we built were swords. We only have one remaining for display. Most of them were modeled the same way though. There was also a battle ax, but it broke. The head on the ax had so much air resistance that it didn’t really work like the other ones did. These weapons were mostly just for fun, but they were also used weekly during our Shakespeare readings.

Our last project was a series of polyhedrons that we built for our math professor, who is very interested in geometry, and we gave them faces and made them heads on the spur of the moment because we had the idea to do it. These heads were probably some of my favorites of the projects, second only to the cannons.

My classmates and I had a lot of fun building these things, and I hope you enjoy them. Thank you for spending so much time reading this long list of stuff that you can mostly see right in front of you. I hope you enjoyed my descriptions, and I really enjoyed sharing these with you.

Landon