How Not To Choose a College

Today, I was going to do something productive, like clean my room or try to plot out a story using songs on Spotify, but I was distracted when the mail came. A while back, I got a scouting letter from Yale, one of those mass mailings sent out to everyone in the top ten percent of their class or something. I get a lot of college junk mail, so the only reason I noticed the Yale one was because, holy crap, it's Yale scouting me. I ignored it though, because none of the East Coast schools are super high on my list of potential colleges; I joked about it, in fact, saying that if I got one from Harvard, I'd race the two letters to see which one won, and that would be the elite school to which I'd apply and from which I'd be rejected. Well, the Harvard scouting letter came today, and I remembered that I kept the Yale one, just in case. So today, instead of being productive, I staged a grand experiment: Which School's Paper Airplane Will Win?


Now, I'm going to do this right, because: A) I'm really bored, and B) I think it's funny. So. Here's the experimental log.

The Great Paper Airplane Race

• Goal: To see which airplane flies furthest
• Necessary Materials:
• Two (2) scouting letters, one each from Harvard and from Yale (each letter having two (2) pages)
• Two (2) plain sheets of printer-quality paper
• One (1) kitchen scale
• One (1) tape measure
• One (1) large, open basement in which to fly the planes.
• Procedure
• Weigh all sheets of paper, to determine if there is a bias towards either of the schools or the control. Not for any real reason, just for kicks.
• Take one (1) sheet from each scouting letter and one (1) sheet of regular printer paper, and fold all three sheets into a normal paper airplane, like so.
• Take the remaining sheets of paper and fold them into a different design of airplane. (I chose a slightly modified version of the Dart, the difference being that I folded the wings to give them a larger surface-area to weight ratio)
• Carefully throw all six paper airplanes across the basement.
• Measure after each set of throws and see which airplanes went furthest.
• Results
• (I'm going to record my thoughts here - bad form, I know)
• Harvard's paper weighs in at .010 pounds per sheet, while Yale weighs .015 lbs each and printer paper weighs again a light .010 lbs. This may result in a bias against Yale. Sorry, Yale.
• So, from a steady position  kneeling on my couch and leaning over the back, I start launching paper airplanes. First up were the normal planes. 
• Test One (Normal planes)
• Yale went first, with an unfortunate distance of ten feet, and an odd spin as it fell to the ground. Poor show, Yale
• Harvard did the exact same thing, however, with a worse showing of six feet. 
• The control went last, and did a loop before landing upside down, a somewhat better fifteen feet away.
• At this point, I realized I'd folded the planes oddly, a mistest was called,  and time was taken to correct their wings.
• Test One-B
• Harvard was thrown again, with better results, but was batted from the air by a rogue cat before the flight was completed. Second mistest called.
• Test One-C
• Harvard successfully flew twenty feet, with a graceful twirl and upright landing
• Yale successfully flew a surprising twenty-four feet, with a smooth landing and subsequent skid
• The control went roughly twenty feet, but ran into a box before it could skid further.
• Test Two (Dart planes)
• After numerous mistests, the causes of which included but were not limited to: planes circling around and flying essentially negative feet, planes falling open and drifting to the ground mid-flight, another rogue cat, and a plane circling around and hitting me in the head, a stapler was procured and one (1) staple was added to the tail of each of the three dart planes, for structural support
• Harvard flew a disappointing fourteen feet and landed upside down.
• Yale flew a somewhat better twenty feet, landed upside down, and pulled a 180 degree spin upon landing.
• The control did a nosedive, only flew eight feet.
• Discussion
• I should probably have thrown the planes several more times, just to make sure I achieved scientific rigour, but as the point of this experiment was mostly to entertain myself for an evening rather than actually prove anything, I'm not going to. 
• Mean Distance Flown
• Harvard: seventeen feet
• Yale: twenty-two feet
• Control: fourteen feet
• I'm thinking that the control's paper, not being of the nice, high-quality, quite-possibly-parchment stuff that the colleges' paper was, didn't have quite the lift that they did. Or maybe I just threw it weird. I don't know.
• Conclusion
• Yale wins!

So much for choosing what elite school I want to be rejected from in a mature, adult fashion. Huzzah for paper airplanes!

Can't Quite String Together a Coherent, Long Train of Thought

I'm semi-officially a senior in high school now. Summer vacation has started. I should be freaking out over both of these things, and figuring out how best to get maximum enjoyment out of my summer.

Instead, I spent two hours yesterday cleaning up after previous renters to make a house ready for new ones. Ew. Certain things I'd really prefer not to clean up, and someone else's nasty kitchen or odd-smelling bathroom are definitely high on that list.

On the upside, there's a pool party this afternoon. I love having so many friends with pools. It means I don't have to pay for a pool pass, ever. Maybe, if I go swimming enough, I'll even discover a heretofore latent ability to *gasp* tan. Unlikely. But whatever.




I discovered a lava lamp in the attic today. Yes, it's now in my room. Shut up, it's blue and purple and highly distracting. I spent half an hour earlier just watching it. Lava-stuff goes up... Lava stuff goes down... Lava-stuff goes up... Lava-stuff goes down... Then I distracted myself from that distraction by trying to figure out the relative density of the lava-stuff in heated and unheated forms, compared to the liquid in which it floats. Then I realized I had to factor in cohesion of the lava-stuff to itself, and how much it weighed, and measure the time it took to float up and down, and while I was searching for a stopwatch I realized exactly how bored I am. And how much of a nerd I am.

(No, of course that didn't stop me. As far as I can tell, if the water at 50 degrees C has a density of 988.1 kg/m^3, then this material has a density of roughly 900kg/m^3 at the same temperature. When unheated, I'm thinking it's something like 1050kg/m^3 or more. Of course this is probably all wrong, considering some research I did, which led me to realize that the water isn't pure [duh], so that density is off and therefore so is everything else. Plus I have no clue what the wax is, etc. etc. There's only so much Google can help me with. But it was a pleasantly nerdy distraction from my distraction from my distraction.)



I just realized my soda is the same color as my lava lamp. Interesting.