Do we still teach kids that planes fly because of Bernoulli's principle?
I remember learning about it and wondering why newton's 3rd law wouldn't suffice. It's pretty obvious that the wings push air down and it's not that difficult to understand (even as a kid) that newton's 3rd law works.
The essence of the Bernoulli argument is that the top of the wing is longer -> air has to move further -> faster air has lower pressure "because Bernoulli" -> pressure imbalance means lift.
Ok, cool, but the "Bernoulli principle" I got as a kid was "faster air is lower pressure", which is both empirically wrong (the air in a compressor hose is obviously moving faster than the air in the workshop) and logically inconsistent (speed is relative, after all). You add in a half dozen qualifiers and it becomes true, but I wonder if this is more complicated than "the wings push air down, the air pushes the wing up".
I remember learning about it and wondering why newton's 3rd law wouldn't suffice. It's pretty obvious that the wings push air down and it's not that difficult to understand (even as a kid) that newton's 3rd law works.
The essence of the Bernoulli argument is that the top of the wing is longer -> air has to move further -> faster air has lower pressure "because Bernoulli" -> pressure imbalance means lift.
Ok, cool, but the "Bernoulli principle" I got as a kid was "faster air is lower pressure", which is both empirically wrong (the air in a compressor hose is obviously moving faster than the air in the workshop) and logically inconsistent (speed is relative, after all). You add in a half dozen qualifiers and it becomes true, but I wonder if this is more complicated than "the wings push air down, the air pushes the wing up".