Even in 1800, it was understood—by at least one person, a certain George Cayley—that two forces, weight and drag, were antagonistic to flight and that there must be two corresponding forces to ...

Aerodynamics explains how airplanes fly through the interplay of four fundamental forces: lift, weight, thrust, and drag. Lift opposes gravity, thrust propels forward, and drag resists motion. Pilots ...

Airplane flight is one of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century. The invention of the airplane allows people to travel from one side of the planet to the other in less ...

While the engineering behind modern aircraft is incredibly complicated, the basic concepts behind getting airborne is simpler than you might think. “So the fundamentals, the physics of flight, deal ...