Re: misconceptions (physics of flight)

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 05:51 AM 7/29/99 +0000, K. Lee Lerner wrote in part:
> The text explained that atmospheric
> Oxygen was, of course, a diatomic molecule and that the leading edge of the
> wing separated the atoms in the molecule.  To further this lunacy,  the two
> oxygen atoms were depicted as being attached by springs, apparently to
> explain that the attraction of the Oxygen atoms for one another grew as they
> were separated.
...
> And to think  we later flew at 400 knots 200 feet off the deck in
> machines designed by the same folks who wrote the engineering text!

Oh, I doubt it was the same folks.  Real airplane designers would roll their eyes and purple smoke would come out of their ears if they heard somebody explaining lift in terms of air passing above and below the wing in equal time.

As far as I can tell, the training books were written by people who never knew what circulation is, never knew what energy is, and who couldn't do a Zhukovsky transformation if their life depended on it.  Now I'm not saying that *pilots* should do Zhukovsky transformations --- I had a PhD in physics and a flight instructor certificate long before I ever did one --- but they guys who write the books ought to do them (or, nowadays, a finite-element analysis, or some experiments) so that they can know the difference between common sense and the much more common monsense.  And pilots *should* be taught about circulation and about energy.

Anybody who's interested can check out
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/how/