Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet upside down

Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by na85 on Friday March 17, 2017 @12:18AM (#13891451)

>There is an area of low pressure over the wing where air is taking a longer path than under the wing, but that is only responsible for a small fraction of the lift.

The "equal transit time" theory that you appear to be referencing here (air over the top takes a longer path, thus it must go faster and air under the bottom takes a shorter path thus it goes slower) is a complete fallacy. There is no mechanism in physics that requires the air to "meet up" at the trailing edge of the wing.

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Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by billforsternz on Friday March 17, 2017 @12:30AM (#13891500)

Thanks for this. I read a million explanations of how airfoils worked as a boy and they all said the air had to travel faster over the top surface to catch up. Why does it have to catch up? I would scream internally. I'm stunned to find it was never true.

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Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by mbrookes on Friday March 17, 2017 @07:36AM (#13893173)

This [1] is one of the most comprehensive examinations of lift, written in layman terms.

You can read the HN discussion here [2], since this appeared on the front page a week ago, much to my surprise [3].

[1]1 http://ljjensen.net/Maritimt/A%20Review%20of%20Modern%20Sail...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13829625

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835243

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Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by luca_ing on Friday March 17, 2017 @03:48AM (#13892286)

If you're interested in the topic, maybe you'd like to read

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm

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Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by rhizome on Friday March 17, 2017 @02:36AM (#13892012)

Probably like the Bohr model in Chemistry, it's an easy way to introduce the concept. Frankly I was under the impression it was true, too, and my dad was a small-plane pilot.

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Re:Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet up... by halomru on Friday March 17, 2017 @07:21AM (#13893093)

The Bohr model at least has simplicity going for it, and it's close enough to explain most things that are relevant to chemistry.

For aircraft lift, "equal transit time" is not easier to understand than "an angled wing pushes air down, because of conservation of momentum that pushes the aircraft up".

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