What Makes Airplanes Fly?

Download or read book What Makes Airplanes Fly? written by Peter P. Wegener and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developed for humanities students at Yale and intended for the general reader interested in flight, this book is about aerodynamics in the broadest sense. To put the science into its social context, the author describes (with many illustrations) the history of human attempts to fly and discusses the outlook for future developments, as well as the social impact of commercial aviation. Although only elementary mathematics is used, the underlying science is discussed rigorously, but clearly, and with an emphasis on the visualizable aspects. Thus readers whose background is not in physics will deepen their knowledge of physics, gain an understanding of what keeps the huge airliners up, and appreciate some of the details of the exciting recent developments in technology.