High Flying Adventures

High Flying Adventures

WELCOME! to Steve's FLIGHT site.
This site was created in February of 2000 while I was a student in the
Faculty of Education at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
I hope you find this web site interesting and educational.
It was designed specifically with grade six students
in mind - to be a fun place for them to come and learn.
So Happy Learning and Happy Flying!!

A Fun Experiment	Flight Word Search
Flight Quiz	Flight Links

A Fun Experiment

Cut a two-inch wide strip off a newspaper or notebook paper. The strip should be about ten inches long.
Hold one end of the strip against your chin, just below the mouth. Let the rest of the strip hang freely. Blow hard over the top of the strip and watch what happens. The paper rises!

Why does the paper rise?

This question is similar to "How Do Planes Fly?" Both questions have the same answer.

Before answering why the strip of paper rises or planes fly, let’s do another simple experiment.

[girl holding ball] Hold a ball steady.
If you let it go, the ball falls because of gravity.
But while you hold the ball steady, it does not fall. Why? Because you hold it up with your arm and hand. You push up as hard as gravity pulls down.

Now slightly increase the force with which you push up. The ball rises! Your push up is now greater than the pull down. [girl holding ball]

If your push up is less than the pull down, the ball comes down.

The same principles apply to planes, as we shall explore next.

The Up and Down Forces on Planes

First, the down force. It’s gravity.

Now the up force. Repeat the experiment with the strip of paper. Think what’s happening. It’s the flow of the air across the top of the paper that makes it rise and gives it a lift.

It’s the same with airplane wings.

Airplane wings have more curvature on the top than on the bottom. As the wings slice through air during flight, the air above has further to go to reach the back of the wings (due to their curvature) and moves faster than the air below the wings.

Air that moves quickly has less pressure than air that moves slowly. That means there is less pressure on the top of the wing than below it.

Net result -- the wings get pushed up and the plane feels a lift. The statement, "Air that moves quickly has less pressure than air that moves slowly," is the key to why the strip of paper rises and planes stay up in the air. The statement applies not just to air, but also to water and other fluids. It’s called "Bernoulli’s principle," after Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss physician and mathematician, who discovered it in the 18th century.

Pressure and Lift

We'd better talk a bit more about why less pressure on top of the wings and more pressure below give the plane a lift.

[Earth image] The air around us is under pressure. This pressure is a force that presses on every square inch of our bodies and other objects. It's caused by the atmosphere that weighs down on us.

Mostly you are unaware of air pressure. You may notice it when you drive down from a mountain and your ears pop. This popping is due to an increase in air pressure as you get to a lower elevation.

More on Pressure and Lift

The important thing to realize about air pressure is that it’s a force that pushes on every square inch of the plane’s wings, as well as on all other surfaces of the plane.

[plane image on ground] Plane on ground
While the plane is parked on the ground, the air pressure pushing on it is the same on all sides -- top, bottom, left, and right. There is no lift.

[plane image in air] Plane in air
It's different when the plane flies and moves forward quickly. Now there is a difference between the pressure on the top of the wings and on the bottom of the wings. On top of the wings, the pressure pushes down less. On the bottom of the wings, the pressure pushes up more.

Net result -- the up push wins and the plane feels a lift.

So to summarize, much like in the case of the ball, the forces of lift and gravity that act on the plane have these effects:

If the lift (up) and gravity (down) are equal, they cancel each other. The plane flies horizontally.

If the lift is greater than gravity, the plane climbs.

If the lift is less than gravity, the plane descends.

Fun Activities

See How it Flies! quiz~ ~ See How it Flies! Wordsearch

Flight Links

Highlights in the History of Canadian Aviation~ Build the Best Paper Airplane in the World
Build a High Flying Falcon Flyer~ NASA Kids Corner ~ Airplane Anatomy
Gander Academy's Flight Resources on the WWW - An Amazing Site!!!
Aeronautics - Principles of Flight

Please send us an with any comments or suggestions.

This page was last edited by SZ on February 14, 2002.

Copywrite Notice: The information and pictures contained on this site have been borrowed from NASA's flight site and I have reformatted their material to be more user friendly. If you would like to visit their site it can be found at:
NASA's Observatorium