3 ms·
>it's not pushes-flow-down-so-goes-up. Yes, it is. It cannot be any other way; momentum is always conserved. You need to get that 9.81m/s^2 acceleration from s
by dTal 5y ago
>it's not pushes-flow-down-so-goes-up.
Yes, it is. It cannot be any other way; momentum is always conserved. You need to get that 9.81m/s^2 acceleration from somewhere!
To answer your two questions:
1) A simple wing is basically a teardrop shaped fairing around a flat plate - not unlike a rudder. Like a rudder, it can redirect the flow in either direction, depending on the angle it meets the air. (In fact, most aircraft struggle to fly upside down - if they're not aerobatic they tend to have wings that are like fairings around curved plates, to more efficiently redirect air in a single direction.)
2) The aircraft in front of you has just imparted a ton of downward momentum to the air. Compared to flight through clean still air, you're on an elevator that's going down.
- ertemplin 5y agoRegarding your 2nd answer, taking off quickly after another aircraft has departed is difficult because of wake turbulence. The most hazardous part of wake turbulence is the spiraling wingtip vortices which can be observed in this neat video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfY5ZQDzC5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfY5ZQDzC5s One notable wake turbulence incident was in 2006 at Boeing Field in Seattle where a Cessna 172 and Boeing 747 were both on final approach for parallel runways. The Cessna 172 got flipped almost upside down and recovered 150 feet over the terrain: https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20061122X01707&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=IA https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?E...