Instagram Is Unimpressed With Gordon Ramsay's Paper Airplane Skills
By all accounts, it looks set to be impressive: We follow Gordon Ramsay as he finishes folding a paper airplane and walks along the top floor of the set of his new show, "Next Level Chef." (In case you haven't seen the competition show, its kitchen is divided into three levels, with the top level representing the most elite chef's quarters.) In Ramsay's paper airplane Instagram video, the text overlay reads, "How high is the set on Next Level Chef?" while the footage shows Ramsay approaching the top floor's balcony. He launches the airplane, and... it plummets.
Responses to Ramsay's painfully unsatisfying launch can best be described as tepid. "That was nowhere near as hype as I was expecting it to be," one Instagram user commented, while another felt badly for the chef: "I'm sorry the paper plane dropped like a rock. Gordon stick to food." However, others were impressed that Ramsay was able to build such an admittedly crisp paper airplane. "Chef with his paper plane skills! Woo!" one person said. Plus, plenty of people took the opportunity to compliment him on his new show.
Where did Ramsay's paper plane go wrong?
Considering how busy Gordon Ramsay is hosting television shows, running restaurants, and being a father and husband, the celebrity chef probably doesn't have time to investigate the science behind paper airplanes. Luckily, we do. As Exploratorium explains, paper airplanes operate with the same forces as regular airplanes, except without the machinery. What keeps the plane going is a balance between gravity, which pulls it down, and lift, which pushes it up. Each has its own center. The center of lift must come behind the center of gravity, or else the paper airplane won't fly. You can influence where the center of gravity is by folding the paper a certain way.
Of course, part of a successful paper plane flight is in the way you throw it, which could be where Ramsay went wrong. Per Art of Manliness, some planes fly better when tossed gently. "Your tendency is to launch it, but the heavy nose will just fly it into the ground," the site explains. Perhaps Ramsay's sheer force led to his plane's demise, and if he had released it more gently, it could have better emphasized the immensity of the set of "Next Level Chef."