I just got back from a short vacation to Kitty Hawk. My first time visiting
the Outer Banks. It was a thoroughly
enjoyable trip, but the part I was really looking forward to was seeing the
Wright Brothers Memorial. Imagine my
disappointment when in no less than three different places throughout the
museum (including the film they showed
to visitors), I found them presenting the incorrect explanation of lift
being the result of Bernoulli's principle because
the air has to go faster over the top of the wing, because it has a longer
distance to travel than the air below the wing.
What do you think? Should I try to find out who I could talk to about
fixing this? Or is this a lost cause? Why
does this story keep getting perpetuated, when it's obviously incorrect?
Who fact-checks the national parks???
Well, I went my whole life thinking the first powered flight was at Kitty
Hawk, and now I found out it was actually
at Kill Devil Hills. Did Kitty Hawk have a better PR department? ;-) Or
did people just not want to have to
keep referring to a town that had the word "Devil" in it? So if the common
wisdom has the very town wrong,
maybe I shouldn't get too upset about something as complicated as lift.
:-) Actually, it's probably because in
1903 there was hardly anything there, and for all I know, the border between
Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills
might have moved since then. It's certainly in Kill Devil Hills now.