Airplane Pilot's As Physicists

"mike regish" wrote in message
. ..
I think that the shape of the wing simply allows for a greater range of
angles of attack. A sheet of plywood would provide lift, but only at a
very
precise and small angle of attack.

The airfoil shape allows the wing to
provide lift through a much larger range of angles of attack.

Well sort of.

Thick wings do tend to operate over a wider range of angles than thin wings
but most subsonic wing sections will work from 0 to 10 degrees or more. It's
above 12 or 15 degrees that the section becomes more critical.

A conventional wing section with camber can produce +ve lift at zero degrees
AOA.

The zero lift angle (the angle at which no lift is produced) is actually
negative on many conventional sections.

Colin

JMO.

mike
"Gatt" wrote in message
...

"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Le Chaud Lapin writes:

Even though this (new) thread is not about what causes a wing to
lift,
I just wanted to say for the record that I agree with this answer,
that it is both AoA and curvature of the wing.

It's just AOA.

Nope.

There goes my Lapin = MX theory. Apologies to Chaud are probably in
order. (I probably apologize?)

-c