How do heavy metal tubes with lots of passengers and luggage stay up in the air?
Without getting too technical, try this experiment. The next time you’re driving down the highway in your Toyota, stick your hand out the window, parallel to the ground, and fly it along like a wing. Bend it upward slightly and it rises, right?Orville Wright said, “The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall.”Still not getting your Toyota off the ground? Imagine your hand is really, really big and the car has enough horsepower to go really, really fast. Becoming airborne is all about procuring the right surpluses among the four competing forces of flight – enough thrust over drag, and enough lift over weight. The size of the airplane is irrelevant.Loss of lift is a stall. Stick that hand of yours back out the window and tilt your hand a little too steeply, or brake the Toyota below a certain point, and your arm ceases to fly. That’s a stall.
