Re: Misconceptions: Physics of Flight

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Lois Breur Krause wrote:

> the mental picture i have is that
> the individual molecules move up and down, or down and up again, not
> horizontally.

It turns out that the horizontal motion of the particles is proportional
to the lifting force being generated.  In other words, if we adjust our
airfoil so that adjacent particles are divided and then they recombine
again at the trailing edge, so that formerly-adjacent particles are once
again neighbors... then the lifting force goes to zero.

There is a wind-tunnel photo of the phenomeon at:

   http://www.amasci.com/wing/airgif.html





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