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Airplanes generate enough lift to fly by accelerating air faster over their moving wings, which makes the pressure above the wings lower than the pressure below.

Findings

Additional insights we found via TED-Ed

  1. As turbines push air to the back of an airplane, the air pushes the airplane forward, propelling it through air that is deflected around the wing to create a pressure differential.

  2. A common misconception is that the air split above and below a wing must meet at the back of the wing and therefore move faster above the wing because of the longer, curved path, but the overwing speed is much higher than this meeting speed due to the acceleration caused by the curvature of the airflow.

  3. Planes with flat wings can generate lift—provided they are tilted upward—by accelerating air as it is deflected around the wings.

  4. Besides the pressure differential, the force of lift is also affected by vortices of air at the wing's tip, the angle of attack, and airflow many meters from the wing.

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