Gee George, I didn't know Wikipedia was so smart!

Yeah this is extremely strange, I need to get some confirmation on this.

Wikipedia Article

Now I was taught differently by my physics teaches and my Ground school instructors. Can anyone back wikipedia up on this? Or should we just stop using Wikipedia as a credible source of information all together?

Can anyone with a Wikipedia account edit this?

Shattered OUT...

This source explains it thus-

Newton's Third Law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In order for air to push a wing up, the wing must also be pushing the air down. This is the force that creates lift, not a difference in pressure.

Remember, wikipedia is only a collection of infortmation, no original research is allowed. Anything in an article should be verifiable by looking at it's references. If you cant verify something by it's reference, I almost always assume that it's amde up.

To say "wikipedia is wrong" makes no sense, as wikipedia only repeats information. If someone takes a pciture of a pie tina nd says it's a UFO, the actual photograph is not fake. It a real, honest photograph. The information within the photo, the pie tin, is what is dishonest.

The article is right. The Principle of Equal Transit Times is wrong. The way that lift is taught in books and in ground school is the popular it's been taught for years, because it's so simple. But it's still wrong. The air travelling over the top of the wing gets to the back of the wing quite a bit faster than the air travelling under the bottom of the wing.

reply to post by ShatteredSkies


From what I gather, perhaps the distance streamline air molecules travel along the air foil is identical. There is still high pressure (more condensed air) under the wing at takeoff, doesn't necessarily mean it stays that way.

Maybe all this time it was just being over-explained.

Take a piece of paper, hold two corners with your fingertips and let the paper droop. Now take a deep breath and blow over the top side of the sheet of paper and it will start to level out; not because of distance, but velocity.

[edit on 29-3-2008 by Kinesis]

reply to post by Kinesis


The air travelling over the top of the wing gets to the back of the wing first. The wing is "bending" the air downward as it leaves the back of the wing, which pushes up on the wing and creates lift. That's pretty oversimplified again, but here is a good page that explains it a lot better than I can.

Ok, I think there is a bit of confusion here. I understand fully who creates lift, just as Zaphod said, the explanation given for so long is so simple, that in this literation of it, it is wrong.

When I was taught, the emphasis was never the timing of the air reaching the trailing edge, the emphasis was on the fact that the speed over the air foil is faster than the below it. That's about the most important aspect of it. Now it is illogical for the air to reach the trailing edge at the same time, the air traveling at the top of the foil reaches the trailing edge a little sooner than the bottom air.

I guess the problem here lies when you try to put together a picture puzzle with half the correct pieces and you have to guess what the rest looks like.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
When I was taught, the emphasis was never the timing of the air reaching the trailing edge, the emphasis was on the fact that the speed over the air foil is faster than the below it. That's about the most important aspect of it. Now it is illogical for the air to reach the trailing edge at the same time, the air traveling at the top of the foil reaches the trailing edge a little sooner than the bottom air.

So far, everyone's got the right idea. What Wikipedia is correcting, is the false assumption that the the upper half of the air foil has a greater surface area than the bottom. I think we're all in agreement as to the real reason behind the principle of air lift: high velocity of the upper streamline pulling up on the back of the wing that is tilted downward.