Western Michigan University philosophy professor and paper airplane enthusiast Tim McGrew will give paper plane lessons at Kazoo Books on Parkview during the Art Hop on July 10th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
McGrew is the chairman for Western Michigan University’s Department of Philosophy. He’s taught there for about 20 years.
So how did a philosophy professor start folding paper planes? McGrew says they've always been an obsession with him ever since he was a kid.
“I made whole fleets of them, to the despair of my parents. They populated the living room and my bedroom and went sailing around corners at unpredictable angles at unpredictable times. And I think it’s a valuable thing not to be too hasty about growing up all the way. I think being a bit of a kid at heart is something that’s worthwhile. And so I’ve retained this and I’ve found that it brings a lot of joy to me and it’s a point of connection with kids as well. If I see a kid in a coffee shop and he looks like he’s a little restless and he doesn’t know what to do, I’ll often say, ‘Hey, would you like a paper airplane?’ And we’re off.”
McGrew says you can make all kinds of paper airplanes with just ordinary scrap paper. Planes for gliding, planes for sending notes, fast planes, planes that will stay in the air for eight or ten seconds.
"Sometimes the wind will catch on the inside of the model and up it goes and it may sail away over the treetops," says McGrew. "I’ve had them go over buildings and be lost—much to the delight of the people I was making them with.”
McGrew says there are a few tricks to making a good paper airplane. Knowing a little origami helps, of course. It’s also important to make your folds symmetrical—otherwise the plane won’t fly in a straight line.
Whatever you do, make sure there’s more weight in the front of the plane.
“You don’t do that, the paper just flutters to the ground as it would if you didn’t really fold it into much of anything," says McGrew.
McGrew says most paper airplanes aren’t perfect on the first flight. He says you have to adjust them.
“The art of fine-tuning a paper airplane—so that it will do what you need it to do, go where you want it to go, do loops, fly straight—is its own thing. It’s half engineering. It’s no longer just a kid thing," he says.
"You start realizing how the air surfaces…the control surfaces of the aircraft affect flight. You learn where to give it a little twist or a little tweak. So that is part of the fun.”
