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What really makes an airplane fly?
A plane’s engines are designed to move it forward at high speed. That makes air flow rapidly over the wings, which throw the air down toward the ground, generating an upward force called lift that overcomes the plane’s weight and holds it in the sky. The wings force the air downward and that pushes the plane upward.
How is flying possible?
They float on air much like rafts float on water. When the air cools, the particles fall back to Earth. Heavier-than-air flight is made possible by a careful balance of four physical forces: lift, drag, weight, and thrust. For flight, an aircraft’s lift must balance its weight, and its thrust must exceed its drag.
Can an airplane stay in the air without moving?
Techincally, there is only one way for the aircraft to remain hanging motionless in the air: if weight and lift cancel each other out perfectly, and at the same time thrust and drag cancel each other out too. But this is incredibly rare. To stay in the air and sustain its flight, an aircraft needs to be moving forward.
Do planes dump their waste in the air?
Airlines are not allowed to dump their waste tanks in mid-flight, and pilots have no mechanism by which to do so; however, leaks sometimes do occur from a plane’s septic tank.
Why do airplanes need to fly so high?
“Why Do Planes Fly So High?”. • The air in the earth’s atmosphere becomes thinner as the altitude increases. When the air becomes thinner, it offers less resistance to objects flying through; this is why less thrust is required to move the aircraft. This in turn, helps the aircraft fly more efficiently.
Why do airplanes fly at such a high altitude?
Let’s look into the science of why planes fly so high. One of the main reasons commercial airplanes fly so high is air resistance. You see, the higher you go above the ground, the thinner the atmosphere becomes, and therefore, the less resistance there is on the movement of the plane.
Why are airplanes always in the air?
Airplanes take off and stay in the air because of lift — the force from the movement of air under the plane’s wings that push it upward. Lou McNally is a professor of meteorology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. When pilots try to take off in extreme heat the planes sometimes cannot lift before the runway ends.
How and why are air planes able to fly?
Air Flows Faster Over the Top than Underneath, so it Uses Less Pressure. Higher Pressure Air Underneath the Wing Pushes it Up. Airplanes can fly because of air . The air moving under their wings is strong enough to hold them up. An airplane wing is round on top. The bottom is flat. The plane’s engines push the wing forward.