Anyone sauntering into Levien yesterday afternoon to shoot some hoops got a little more than they bargained for: a gym full of high-tech paper airplanes.  Red Bull’s Paper Wings Contest gathered a crowd of 20 or so engineering-types who spent an hour and a half battling it out for a free trip to Salzburg, Austria (home of the Red Bull Headquarters, where they put the real lightning into the cans), and the chance to compete with other schools’ engineering-types in some sort of world finals. 

From what Bwog hears, Columbia’s resident paper airplane geniuses–Mikey Antonakakis, Austin Brauser and Menachem Kaiser–have a decent chance of hopping a larger plane and flying to the edelweiss capital of the world.  Columbia-Red Bull pontifex and CU Formula SAE associate Nicholas Chang promises to alert us as soon as he knows how Columbia’s scores match up to the 200-or-so other schools’.

The judges, a trio of slim, heavily made-up, imported Red Bull babes, judged our boys’ designs in three categories: total flight distance, amount of hang time, and “aerobatics,” or, fancy tricks.  Brauser’s spinning paper ring took the Columbia prize for aerobatics, and Antonakakis, decked out in a Formula One driver’s jumpsuit and helmet, swept up in both distance and hang time; one of his planes flew 110 feet, and another stayed in the air for a glorious 6.63 seconds.  Kaiser’s impromptu entries–he showed up for the basketball and stayed for the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat–came in close behind Antonakakis.  Check out some pictures after the jump!