Airplane Pilot's As Physicists

The mad scientist! :-)

Excellent demonstrations. I liked when he held up the boomerang..."whatever
these do"

I used to make boomerangs out of 3/8" plywood. I made them by making each
wing an airfoil shape-the thick part of the airfoil on the outside on one
wing and on the inside of the other. Many commercial boomerangs have a sort
of aileron sanded into the bottom of one wing tip, but you don't need that.
As each wing starts moving forward in its rotation, that wing is moving
faster and provides more lift than the other, giving it an impulse to the
left. As the bottom wing comes around, it now provides more lift and gives
it another push-and so it goes. And the boomerang makes a curving flight
back to you.

mike

"Androcles"

wrote in message
.uk...

"CWatters" wrote in message
...
:
: "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.

Ever heard of Bernoulli?
Try this demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCcZyW-6-5o
A Tomahawk cruise missile uses its wings as a control surface more
than for lift. Straight and level is useful for the computer programmer.
He thinks that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19XXTArAGaM