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No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air (2020)

11 pointsby ohxhover 2 years ago

5 comments

injbover 2 years ago
There&#x27;s a very famous book called Stick and Rudder that does a good job of explaining this. A plane stays up because of Newtonian reaction. The Bernloulli principle and its associated airfoil shape should be thought of as an efficient way of displacing air downwards without the <i>appearance</i> of the wing being angled upwards.<p>IOW a classic airfoil that appears horizontal is really best thought of as a flat surface that&#x27;s angled upwards. When a plane with a wing like that inverts, it really does &quot;lift&quot; downwards, and it takes considerable elevator correction to keep level.<p>If the wing had a symmetric airfoil section, then it needs to be visibly angled upwards in order to fly; but on the other hand when upside down it doesn&#x27;t take as much elevator input to stay up as the classic asymmetric version.
Mageekover 2 years ago
The title is complete clickbait. It should say “no one’s short intuitive explanations of why planes stay in the air are fully correct”
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entropicgravityover 2 years ago
Just as no one can explain how bicycles stay up once they get moving. Or why hot air rises but it&#x27;s always cold in the mountains when they should be hot from all that rising hot air.
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musicaleover 2 years ago
We know why paper airplanes stay in the air. They are lifted up by hot air from the teachers they are thrown at.
morpheos137over 2 years ago
I&#x27;d say reaction force is a sufficient explanation. The wing compresses the air column below it. The pressurised air generates buoyancy sufficient to dynamically support the air craft while moving at a high enough speed.
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