Re: Explanation of airfoils [was: Right, wrong, and switching

[Chuck Britton <britton@odie.ncssm.edu>]

> Hello all:
>
> Funny, these coincidences.  I just received a flier for a talk
> to be given here at Fermilab this coming Tuesday (Feb. 17th)
> entitled, "The Physics of Flight: It's Newton not Bernoulli".
>
> The flier text reads:
>
>   The Bernoulli explanation of flight that we were taught
>   is at best incomplete and very often misleading.  A wing
               ^^^^^^^^^^          ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^
>   develops lift by diverting air down.  Lots of air!  This
>   can be understood by simple Newtonian mechanics.  With a
>   few simple assumptions most phenomena associated with
>   flight can be calculated to a good order without ever
>   considering the details of wing shape, or invoking
>   Bernoulli's principle.  Topics to be covered are: lift on
>   a wing, inverted flight, the power curve, drag, ground
>   effect, wing tip vortices, and more.

But I notice that the blurb doesn't actually say WRONG!!!!!
Supersonic wings are in fact symmetric, top and bottom. (or so my flyboy
collegue tells me)

I can't beleive that for sub-sonic flight, the only reason for the 'air
foil' shape to STILL be used is that of inertia from the Wright brother's
original wind tunnel measurements.

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Chuck Britton  					Education is what is left when
britton@odie.ncssm.edu  			you have forgotten everything
North Carolina School of Science & Math		you learned in school.
(919) 286-3366	x224				Albert Einstein, 1936