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Most of us have been taught that an airplane wing generates lift because air must travel faster around the upper surface of the wing than around the lower surface in order to "meet" at the trailing edge. Bernoulli's equation then gives the difference in pressure above & below the wing - ie, the lift. Of course, this is nonsense. Who tells air molecules number 1 & 2 which are next to one another before the wing comes along that they should get back together after the wing passes? Nobody. In fact, they don't.
An airplane wing generates lift by "blowing" air down. A good qualitative explanation of why air is diverted down by a wing can be found in a paper written by David Anderson & Scott Eberhardt. A pdf version of this paper is also available: (click here).
Click Here to see an mpeg video of a low-altitude supersonic jet flyby in which the air being blown down by the jet's wings (downwash) can be seen very clearly.
Last modified by David Christian on December 12, 2001
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