• Question: How do planes stay up in the air?

    Asked by 807enec43 to Hilly, Lee, Liz, Tadhg, Yasmin on 16 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Nicole Smith.
    • Photo: Yasmin Ali

      Yasmin Ali answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Planes stay up in the air because of their wings. The plane’s engines push air back, making the plane move forward. The shape of the wings (curved on top and flat on the bottom), cause air to flow over the top faster than air flowing under the wings, this creates low pressure over the top of the wing and high pressure under it, which lifts the plane and stops it from falling out of the sky.

      Not my area of engineering, but hopefully that makes some sense.

    • Photo: Tadhg O'Donovan

      Tadhg O'Donovan answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Other things to consider are:
      1) The faster you go, the greater the lift. So large heavy aircraft need to travel fast!
      2) The faster you go, the larger the drag – so engines have to do more work – burn more fuel!
      So the engineering challenge is quite complicated

    • Photo: Lee Margetts

      Lee Margetts answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      The wings push the air downwards and that pushes the plane upwards.

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