Roto Copter or PAPER HELICOPTERS

	print-out of the Roto-Copter pattern which you can click-on in Step 1 pencil scissors paper clips crayons or markers newspaper cereal bowl

Print out the Roto-Copter pattern. Click here to go to pattern page or print out in bottom. Cut along the solid lines only. Fold on the dotted lines.     Fold A toward you. Fold B away from you.

Fold C and D over each other so they overlap.

Fold the bottom up and put a paper clip on it.

Hold the Roto-Copter by the paper clip. Throw it like a baseball, as high and far as you can. It will spin to the floor. You can also stand on a chair or on the stairs and drop it. Ask a grown-up if you can drop it out the window.

If you want, you can use crayons or markers to color your Roto-Copter before you fold it. The colors will blur together when it spins.

Make three Roto-Copters for each person. Use a marker to draw a 1-foot circle on a piece of newspaper. Put a cereal bowl in the middle of the circle. The circle is the target area and the bowl is the bull's-eye. Take turns standing on a chair at the edge of the newspaper and dropping your Roto-Copters. At the Exploratorium, we get 3 points for a bull's-eye, 2 points for a copter inside the circle, and one point for just hitting the newspaper-but you can make up any rules you want.
--------------------------------- Igor Sikorsky designed the first successful helicopter in the late 1930s. His inspiration came from drawings of an aircraft with a spinning wing, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci nearly five hundred years before.

Does a big Roto-Copter spin differently than a little one? Here are two sizes for you to try. Print this page out and then return to the Roto-Copter activity.