How Do Airplanes Fly: Weight and Lift Every object on Earth has weight, a product of both gravity and mass. A Boeing 747-8 passenger airliner, for instance, has a maximum takeoff weight of 487.5 tons (442 metric tons), the force with which the weighty plane is drawn toward the Earth...
If we look at the wing of a typical small plane, which has a top surface that is 1.5 - 2.5% longer than the bottom, we discover that a Cessna 172 would have to fly at over 400 mph to generate enough lift. Clearly, something in this description of lift is flawed. But, who says t...
Although the true physics of flying airplanes are quite complex, the whole subject can be simplified a bit - enough for us to get a fundamental understanding of what makes a plane fly, at least!Aerodynamic ForcesEssentially there are 4 aerodynamic forces that act on an airplane in flight, ...
"How Do Things Fly?" is an educational and fun game for learning how flying machines work: the plane, the helicopter, the drone and the hot air balloon... Pilot the different aircraft and watch the different forces interact. What makes an airplane fly? How do you turn or descend? How ...
As we previously mentioned, plane wings are built curved on top and flat on the bottom. The wind flowing over the wing travels a different path from air traveling under the wing. The airflow under the wing helps the plane get into the air and stay there. The force that holds the aircra...
the wing downward, off the trailing edge. Just like when you put your hand out the window, you're deflecting the air downward, and your hand moves up. And because of Newton's Third Law (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction) the wing, and the plane, move upward...
For an airplane to fly (or a car to move forward) thrust has to be larger than drag. The force with which we are most familiar in our daily experience, weight, pulls the plane toward the ground, perpendicularly. And because we agree with Newton, we know that to every action there is...
The total weight of air plus plane in a corridor ten miles wide is the same, whether the plane is flying or on the ground. The plane flies because of its interaction with a local region of air and it leaves behind, in the vortices, the result of this interaction. You are di...
These large eddies are much larger in scale than the wings of the plane though, so the plane will fly just fine through them as long as the pilot is competent. When talking about flow over the wing, however, far more relevant to its function is the turbulence in the wing bound...
Physics is a harsh taskmaster. As a plane speeds toward the sound barrier, air stops "getting out of the way" and compresses into a wall that a plane must punch through. Drag, lift and combustion get downright squirrelly at such speeds, and some supersonic adaptations, such as delta wings...