The Bernoulli Effect
In Feel the Lift our technical genius Thrust Master showed you how you can feel the power of lift by sticking your hand out the car window. He suggested that, while a plane that looked like this COULD...
View ArticleNewton’s First Law of Motion
Newton’s Laws Before talking more about how an aeroplane flies we need to look at some basic scientific ideas. In 1687 a very smart guy called Isaac Newton wrote a book in which he explained HOW and...
View ArticleLift versus Weight
Lift versus Weight There are a number of “forces” acting on an aeroplane that we need to know about. The first of these is “weight”. Everything that is heavy has weight, but what is weight? You...
View ArticleNewton’s Second Law of Motion
Acceleration depends on the Force Applied In scientific gobble-de-speak, Newton’s 2nd Law says: The change of momentum of an object is proportional to the force applied, and happens in the direction...
View ArticleAir Pressure
The atmosphere is what we call the whole bunch of air which surrounds the Earth. A basic problem with understanding aeroplanes and flying is understanding that air is real stuff! It is invisible, so it...
View ArticleNewton’s Third Law of Motion
For every action… Newton’s 3rd law is a biggy… Jet engines rely on this principle to power our airliners through the sky. Airlines would be Groundlines without it! In scientific lingo, Newton’s 3rd Law...
View ArticleRevealed! How Bumblebees Fly
We can now reveal the secret of how bumblebees fly. From a scientific standpoint, flight for bumblebees has long been considered as aerodynamically impossible, their tiny wings being too small to...
View ArticleDesign Your Own Aircraft
Aviation company GE Aviation has added a simple and yet fun “Design Your Own Plane” game to their website. In this game you can experiment with different wing, engine and fuselage options to try to...
View ArticleThe Science of Supersonic Freefall
As a follow-up to our article on Joe Kittinger: Supersonic Parachutist, holder of the parachuting altitude record for over 50 years, we present this video explaining some of the problems encountered by...
View ArticleHow The Wing REALLY works
You’d think, after more than 100 years of powered flight, and many more years than that if you count human experiments with gliders, that there would be no debate about exactly how an aircraft wing...
View ArticleFeel The Lift
Warning This experiment involves sticking your hand out the window of a moving car. This may be ILLEGAL in some countries, and should only ever be done where safe and with the permission of the driver...
View ArticleNewton’s 1st Law of Motion (Inertia)
In 1687 a very smart dude called Isaac Newton came up with 3 “Laws of Motion” that describe how things start moving, keep moving, and eventually stop. Since this is completely important to how an...
View Article
