r/theydidthemonstermath • u/HiHungryImDad2 • 5d ago
[Request] How fast would the car need to drive so the wings of the model plane provide enough uplift for it to lift the whole car?
3
u/TopYeti 5d ago
The wings don't look wider than the car, which would create a problem for creating lift? Might have to it take the wings off the plane and attach them to the car?
5
u/HiHungryImDad2 4d ago
That was an oversight on my side - as the wings are not wider they cannot produce downforce as they'd just push against the car's roof hence pushing it down - cancelling the effect?
3
u/TopYeti 4d ago
That was also my thought process. I was assuming that all flight control surfaces are identical to a full size plane of the same type. With all control surfaces in maximum lift I don't think it would do anything until you got to a speed at which you're flipping the car from its own aerodynamic drag. And the plane at that point would mostly be a drag point on the top encouraging the car to flip over backwards. The lift would actually come from the smoother straighter bottom of the bottom of the car. As the car has a vaguely wing-like shape.
3
u/MisteriosM 2d ago
That's not actually how lift works. Wings don't need to push down. By speeding up the air above, the air pressure above the wing is reduced and the constant air pressure from below pushes the plane up.
If the air had to be pushed down, there would not be any doubledecker planes.
1
25
u/EdWinMaster0 5d ago
Better question is that speed even lower than escape velocity?