Lift (force) - Description of Lift On An Airfoil

Description of Lift On An Airfoil

There are several ways to explain how an airfoil generates lift. Some are more complicated or more mathematically rigorous than others; some have been shown to be incorrect. For example, there are explanations based directly on Newton’s laws of motion and explanations based on Bernoulli’s principle. Either can be used to explain lift. This article will start with the simplest explanation; more complicated and alternative explanations will follow.

Read more about this topic:  Lift (force)

Famous quotes containing the words description of, description and/or lift:

    Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.
    Paul Tillich (1886–1965)

    And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.
    Bible: Hebrew Exodus 20:25.