If you've ever heard a supersonic aircraft fly overhead, then you've probably heard asonic boom. Once an airplane attains Mach 1, the sound waves emitted by the plane can't speed ahead of it. Instead, these wave
If you've ever heard a supersonic aircraft fly overhead, then you've probably heard asonic boom. Once an airplane attains Mach 1, the sound waves emitted by the plane can't speed ahead of it. Instead, these waves accumulate in a cone of sound behind the plane. When this cone passes ...
Actually, you can get a flat wing to fly if you have enough thrust or if the plane is very light, (a high power to weight ratio) as long as you have an angle of attack. The toy balsa wood planes I had as a kid flew with flat wings. But a flat wing doesn’t do a very ...
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, ...
fan, or under the rotors of a helicopter, all of which are rotating wings. If the air were coming off the blades at an angle the air would produce a cone rather than a tight column. If a plane were to fly over a very large scale, the scale would register the weight of the plane...
Photo Courtesy Phoenix Fly To understand wingsuit aerodynamics and how the outfit allows its wearer to really fly, you have to understand the basic physics of flight. The first principle to keep in mind is that air is a fluid -- much like water. Try to move your hand, palm flat, throu...
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...
"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 ...
“You would essentially just subtract off the free stream velocity of the plane.”If I do that, than what was 0 velocity from the air’s frame of reference becomes a negative velocity from the plane’s frame of reference. From the planes frame of refrence, the slight decrease in speed du...
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 boun...