I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I’ve seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just… Soars… Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf… It’s crazy. With how much these things weigh, it’s insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we’re flying now. Like wow… Dude crazy.
I hate that everybody’s like, it’s not that big a deal.
We only started doing it 124 years ago! Prior to that it was a very big deal indeed.
Everyone’s so fucking smart these days, there’s no room for a sense of wonder. It’s like being blasé and knowledgeable is cool. It’s really not.
You keep flying with your beautiful sense of wonder, Buttflapper!
Well fucking said. Smoke noodles rarely have room for curiosity, which is where new things often come from.
Edit: Not sure how smarmy know-it-alls became that, but I’m not changing it now
I’m pretty sure i can’t trust Arthur Vandelay, they are the kind of people that would pass off something they did as if it wasnt intentional
Some lady told me she read Atlas Shrugged while in the hospital for a long stay, kept alive by equipment she neither invented nor paid for. How oblivious people can be when we are all just barely something more than monkeys? Some of us manage to be passably unoblivious and I think that’s what makes us human; the potential to be more rational than a monkey. It’s no guarantee, though, as you so noted. You know there was a caveperson who just learned about fire and still went around and acted like he invented it straight up to the caveperson that did invent it. Monkey brain stuff.
I don’t need ignorance to feel wonder. I think things are cooler when I can marvel at the complex mechanics behind it all.
True. But I wasn’t arguing that.
What puts me in awe of things like flight isn’t the act itself, but the brilliance of the people who designed it to work. I look at the aerodynamic shape of an airfoil and think “we did that…humans”.
To be fair, we sorta knew it was possible because birds. I think it’s more impressive when we don’t know what can happen, like breaking the sound barrier or putting people in space.
That’s the thing though, what’s amazing about planes really depends on your knowledge base or what experience is specifically being enjoyed. If you don’t understand how planes work then the difference is moot because whether seeing or doing the entire thing is magical. If you do understand how planes work you might know that the crazy thing isn’t flight, we knew how to do that since approximately 1800 when the first gliders were built, the crazy part was generating enough power to make powered flight possible. If you understand how flight works and are still enjoying the experience of flight is where wonder still exists.
You know the wonder of flight still exists because some number of kids and adults would pick flight as a super power if given the choice.
I know right… the wings dont even flap!
They really should.
Lazy, if you ask me.
They flap pretty good in heavy turbulence.
I’m not sure that’s quite the same
Planes get excited when they encounter turbulence, so they flap their wings. It’s so cute!
Don’t forget how high you get.
If you get high enough, the idea of heavier-than-air objects not inevitably succumbing to gravity may fill you with wonder as well.
Last time I flew I didn’t get high at all. I must be doing something wrong.
Don’t you need to actually inhale?
Oxygen? Only if you want to keep being an alive person.
Bold assumption there. According to this formulation, I believe that the desired end goal is actually to be a “high” person. Which apparently only requires a 60 ton chunk of metal to make happen so…
And the one before?
ARE. OP is clearly very high right now.
“It’s just always exciting! That amazing moment when twelve tonnes of metal leaves the earth… and no-one knows why!”
“Yes, we do.”
“Yeah, but, you know, not really. I mean, we know you need wings, and engines, and a sticky-up bit on the end for some reason, but it’s not like we actually know why a plane stays in the air.”
“No. No, Arthur, we really do! We- we do, we do know that!”
I don’t know why but I thought that said “Archie” instead of “Arthur”, and read that as Archie and Edith Bunker…and it kind of worked. From the later seasons, when Edith was getting sick of his shit.
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
I find it equally neat how displacement allows a 100,000 ton ship to float.
As I’m sure most know, planes fly because of the angle of their wings and airframe shape (also known as an airfoil). As moving air flows over the wing it creates downward pressure, which, as a result of Newton’s 3rd law (reaction to a force), allows moving air below to create lift. And upsy daisy she goes.
Science.
That lift explanation is innacurate/incomplete. While there may be some equal and opposite forces depending on the angle of attack, the primary reason for lift is due to Bernoulli’s Principle. Airfoils have a rounded upper surface with a longer path for air to take, relative to the underside. This requires air to move at a higher velocity over the top, and since A1 x V1 x P1 = A2 x V2 x P2, pressure over the airfoil decreases. It is this pressure differential that creates lift.
In regards to aircraft, Newton’s third law of motion applies to thrust from a propeller or jet engine.
Bernoulli’s explanation and Newton’s explanation are the same explanation made from different frames of reference. They’re equal, I don’t understand why people insist that one or the other is incomplete or that they somehow both have different contributions to an airplane’s flight. They’re the same. The airplane flies because the air pushes it up turning some of the energy from its substantial forward movement through said air into enough upward acceleration to counteract gravity. That happens both due to pressure differential AND the sum of the deflection of air in exactly the same measure, they are directly linked and have to be equal. Bernoulli’s explanation is one particularly nuanced and clever way of looking at and understanding the exact mechanics of how that happens and if you plug the resulting values into Newton’s math it matches perfectly. The zero “angle of attack” for a cambered airfoil shape is actually measured this way not by measuring the angles of the physical surfaces or anything like that. The Newtonian explanation is just another way of looking at it. Either way it requires intense computations to come to exact numbers, but the numbers are the same either way. The pressure differential of the air IS the mechanical force of the air, happening as an equal and opposite direction to the deflection of the volume of air the plane is flying through, either of which is what we call lift. They’re all the same thing, happening at the same time and yes you can look at them from different perspectives but that doesn’t mean one perspective is wrong and the other is right. They’re all accurately describing the same thing. It is useful to know both, but not necessary and it does not make either of them incorrect.
This discussion always reminds me of the “airplane on a treadmill” argument where both sides read the premise differently and scream at each other that only their way of interpreting the question is right.
From a “pressure make plane go up” point of view, yeah I guess it’s all the same, but I think the methods are distinct enough. Bernoulli’s works by reducing pressure above the airfoil. Action reaction increases pressure below it.
they are directly linked and have to be equal.
I don’t follow. Unless you’re trying to account for the total amount of lift with each separately and the math lines up. I guess that wouldn’t surprise me because bernoulli’s principle is derived from newtonian physics, specifically the second law F=MA, and both contribute to the total production of lift, but not in equal amounts. Symmetrical airfoils for example rely more on angle of attack to generate lift, while an asymmetrical one can maintain level flight at a negative aoa at high enough airspeed.
Yah, that’s correct. I was trying to give the most simplified version, without getting into conservation of energy in a fluid.
Now I’m annoyed with myself for not explaining it further. You did a great job tho.
You don’t need rounded wings to fly though and how are (some) planes able to fly upside down if that is the main explanation of lift?
It’s the main production of lift for asymmetrical airfoils, symmetrical airfoils rely on angle of attack. Basically they point the wings at an upward angle to push air down. This can work upside down.
Consider the amount of air its wings must displace in order to stay aloft. An equal quantity of mass at least. It’s passing through that air and, partly pushing it down, but also partially scraping it thin over the bowed top surface of the wing (the Bernoulli principle) which creates a pressure differential that lifts the wing, pulling it upward through suction, and thus the plane. That’s why the plane must go fast to fly, and why it “stalls” and falls if it isn’t moving through enough air. It’s also how turbulence affects a plane. Differences in air pressure mean that in pockets of low pressure there isn’t as much mass being displaced by the wings, not enough lift so it falls.
Now, it’s quite likely that my layman’s comprehension of this is flawed. But I’m sure it’s entirely possible that someone will correct me soon :3
Damn no one has corrected you in 10 minutes. That’s pretty good!
I fully expect to come back to lemmy in 48 hours to find a fascinatingly detailed and viciously incisive rebuttal that calls me at least three slurs in the first paragraph, sprinkles additional passive aggressive repudiations of my character throughout, and finishes with a tactical f-bomb too :D
I’ve got 7 hours left at work I’ll drum something up for you…
How else are we supposed to learn things?!
To be pedantic: It’s not necessarily an equal amount of mass, it just has to accelerate (this includes deceleration which is acceleration opposing a component of a vector of travel) any amount of mass along and opposite to the vector of the plane’s acceleration due to gravity so long as the amount of mass (and the averaged amount of that mass’ acceleration in the aforementioned direction i.e. force) is in ratio with the planes mass and it’s acceleration due to gravity.
There’s a lot of other pedantic caveats but they’d make this comment far too long. The main thing I want to convey is that mass doesn’t necessarily matter but rather force (m*v) and also that the “suction” and thereby acceleration that a plane’s airfoil experiences is also it causing an acceleration on the air around it by decelerating it along the path that it wants to flow. It all depends on frame of reference.
I suck at explaining things, this video might do a better job at getting the idea across.
Thank you kindly! :D
An a380 is so big when it takes off it looks like it’s moving slow, just kind of hanging in the air
In much the same way that bricks don’t
Dude, the first time I saw a C5 Galaxy take off I was amazed at how slowly it was moving. It’s like what I thought I knew about physics was just wrong, it was so cool.
It’s simple. You just need 60 tons of lift and thrust. Aerodynamics help but you can make a brick fly.
see: The US Space Shuttle program
The wings are crazy ! They look way too flimsy for what they do.
Next time you see an airplane, imagine a crane picking it up by the wings, around the middle of the wing length, and then start shaking it up.
It does not look like the wing will be able to hold that much weight.
I’m even more impressed by aircraft carriers. Just one of those things weigh as much as 250 fully loaded Boeing 747s. And it just floats. :)
“I flew for my first time on a plane”
Now I just feel old.
I didn’t fly on a plane until i was nearly 30. Dont know if you are in the US, but outside of the US, it’s less common to fly anywhere. high speed rail between countries in europe, UK is small enough to drive anywhere, boats and eurostar train to get from UK to Europe. Euro tunnel if you want to take your car to europe.
Or if you’re just poor too! My parents are near retirement age and taking their first vacation by plane next month.
Crazier still when you consider it’s pushed into the sky by its own farts.
Not very accurate. Can’t appreciate your comment as much as I would like to be able to
Well it’s a lot of hot gas shooting out the back that pushes it forward. Would you like beans in the fuel for a true fart?
Sorry misread what you wrote, thought it said powered not pushed
it’s crazy that you can just jump, and you go up for a bit.
It doesn’t just fly, it rages against gravity, using every possible trick in the book
that and about 223,378 pounds of jet fuel then it flies
https://www.globalair.com/aircraft-for-sale/specifications?specid=1699
Steel beams are not gonna melt themselves.
steel beams don’t need to reach their melting point to deform and fail under structural stress
