I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I’ve seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just… Soars… Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf… It’s crazy. With how much these things weigh, it’s insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we’re flying now. Like wow… Dude crazy.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    Consider the amount of air its wings must displace in order to stay aloft. An equal quantity of mass at least. It’s passing through that air and, partly pushing it down, but also partially scraping it thin over the bowed top surface of the wing (the Bernoulli principle) which creates a pressure differential that lifts the wing, pulling it upward through suction, and thus the plane. That’s why the plane must go fast to fly, and why it “stalls” and falls if it isn’t moving through enough air. It’s also how turbulence affects a plane. Differences in air pressure mean that in pockets of low pressure there isn’t as much mass being displaced by the wings, not enough lift so it falls.

    Now, it’s quite likely that my layman’s comprehension of this is flawed. But I’m sure it’s entirely possible that someone will correct me soon :3

    • NiHaDuncan@lemmy.world
      5·
      3 days ago

      To be pedantic: It’s not necessarily an equal amount of mass, it just has to accelerate (this includes deceleration which is acceleration opposing a component of a vector of travel) any amount of mass along and opposite to the vector of the plane’s acceleration due to gravity so long as the amount of mass (and the averaged amount of that mass’ acceleration in the aforementioned direction i.e. force) is in ratio with the planes mass and it’s acceleration due to gravity.

      There’s a lot of other pedantic caveats but they’d make this comment far too long. The main thing I want to convey is that mass doesn’t necessarily matter but rather force (m*v) and also that the “suction” and thereby acceleration that a plane’s airfoil experiences is also it causing an acceleration on the air around it by decelerating it along the path that it wants to flow. It all depends on frame of reference.

      I suck at explaining things, this video might do a better job at getting the idea across.

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
        9·
        3 days ago

        I fully expect to come back to lemmy in 48 hours to find a fascinatingly detailed and viciously incisive rebuttal that calls me at least three slurs in the first paragraph, sprinkles additional passive aggressive repudiations of my character throughout, and finishes with a tactical f-bomb too :D