It's crazy that a 60 ton metal airplane can just fly
I flew for the first time on a plane last week and I've seen planes take off at the airport. It looks crazy. But being on one is totally different like holy shit. The thing just FLIES. It just.... Soars... Through the sky! Like whoa man. Wtf... It's crazy. With how much these things weigh, it's insane to me the thing can just go up and bam, there we are, we're flying now. Like wow... Dude crazy.
We grow flawless crystals, slice them into perfect disks, engrave billions of arcane runes onto them with magical potions and rays of light, animate them with lightning, and make them do our bidding.
And then we give them an "intelligence" that can't even count the Rs in strawberry...
And telephones! Even en old-school analogue phone is pretty amazing how sound becomes an electrical signal and then is converted back to sound at the other end.
Modern digital phones are just pure magic compared to analogue phones.
Some lady told me she read Atlas Shrugged while in the hospital for a long stay, kept alive by equipment she neither invented nor paid for. How oblivious people can be when we are all just barely something more than monkeys? Some of us manage to be passably unoblivious and I think that's what makes us human; the potential to be more rational than a monkey. It's no guarantee, though, as you so noted. You know there was a caveperson who just learned about fire and still went around and acted like he invented it straight up to the caveperson that did invent it. Monkey brain stuff.
What puts me in awe of things like flight isn't the act itself, but the brilliance of the people who designed it to work. I look at the aerodynamic shape of an airfoil and think "we did that...humans".
That's the thing though, what's amazing about planes really depends on your knowledge base or what experience is specifically being enjoyed. If you don't understand how planes work then the difference is moot because whether seeing or doing the entire thing is magical. If you do understand how planes work you might know that the crazy thing isn't flight, we knew how to do that since approximately 1800 when the first gliders were built, the crazy part was generating enough power to make powered flight possible. If you understand how flight works and are still enjoying the experience of flight is where wonder still exists.
You know the wonder of flight still exists because some number of kids and adults would pick flight as a super power if given the choice.
Exactly. Ever skip a stone on the surface of a lake? It's like that, except it's a continuous skip, with air instead of water, and you're inside the stone.
"It's just always exciting! That amazing moment when twelve tonnes of metal leaves the earth... and no-one knows why!"
"Yes, we do."
"Yeah, but, you know, not really. I mean, we know you need wings, and engines, and a sticky-up bit on the end for some reason, but it's not like we actually know why a plane stays in the air."
"No. No, Arthur, we really do! We- we do, we do know that!"
I don't know why but I thought that said "Archie" instead of "Arthur", and read that as Archie and Edith Bunker....and it kind of worked. From the later seasons, when Edith was getting sick of his shit.
I find it equally neat how displacement allows a 100,000 ton ship to float.
As I'm sure most know, planes fly because of the angle of their wings and airframe shape (also known as an airfoil). As moving air flows over the wing it creates downward pressure, which, as a result of Newton's 3rd law (reaction to a force), allows moving air below to create lift. And upsy daisy she goes.
That lift explanation is innacurate/incomplete. While there may be some equal and opposite forces depending on the angle of attack, the primary reason for lift is due to Bernoulli's Principle. Airfoils have a rounded upper surface with a longer path for air to take, relative to the underside. This requires air to move at a higher velocity over the top, and since A1 x V1 x P1 = A2 x V2 x P2, pressure over the airfoil decreases. It is this pressure differential that creates lift.
In regards to aircraft, Newton's third law of motion applies to thrust from a propeller or jet engine.
Bernoulli's explanation and Newton's explanation are the same explanation made from different frames of reference. They're equal, I don't understand why people insist that one or the other is incomplete or that they somehow both have different contributions to an airplane's flight. They're the same. The airplane flies because the air pushes it up turning some of the energy from its substantial forward movement through said air into enough upward acceleration to counteract gravity. That happens both due to pressure differential AND the sum of the deflection of air in exactly the same measure, they are directly linked and have to be equal. Bernoulli's explanation is one particularly nuanced and clever way of looking at and understanding the exact mechanics of how that happens and if you plug the resulting values into Newton's math it matches perfectly. The zero "angle of attack" for a cambered airfoil shape is actually measured this way not by measuring the angles of the physical surfaces or anything like that. The Newtonian explanation is just another way of looking at it. Either way it requires intense computations to come to exact numbers, but the numbers are the same either way. The pressure differential of the air IS the mechanical force of the air, happening as an equal and opposite direction to the deflection of the volume of air the plane is flying through, either of which is what we call lift. They're all the same thing, happening at the same time and yes you can look at them from different perspectives but that doesn't mean one perspective is wrong and the other is right. They're all accurately describing the same thing. It is useful to know both, but not necessary and it does not make either of them incorrect.
This discussion always reminds me of the "airplane on a treadmill" argument where both sides read the premise differently and scream at each other that only their way of interpreting the question is right.
You think that's crazy? The ship that blocked the Suez Canal, the Ever Given, has a ship displacement (how much water is displaced when it sits in the ocean) of 265,000 Tons.
That's 240 million kilograms.
And that shit just floats on fucking water maaaaan...
There's the short ton (2000lbs), long ton (2240 lbs), and tonne (1000kgs) which are all measure weight. However there's also the shipping/freight/ocean ton which is a measure of volume (which is also different in the US and UK), and the register ton.
However I did make a mistake. The wikipedia page I was reading said the weight in t and long tons. I made the mistake of assuming they meant short tons - in reality when measuring displacement for a ship, tonnes are used (which is pretty sensible, considering you're displacing water and a liter of water to a kilogram of water have a pretty easy conversion formula formula...)
Dude, the first time I saw a C5 Galaxy take off I was amazed at how slowly it was moving. It's like what I thought I knew about physics was just wrong, it was so cool.
So there’s this neat thing in quantum mechanics where the state of something could change to a more stable state in what is known as false vacuum decay.
Then it causes everything else of the same type to decay/collapse to the more stable state in a wave travelling in every direction at nearly the speed of light.
Such an event could rewrite fundamental forces of the universe and… one day planes just stop working.
Probably other bad stuff happens as well like our cells stop working and we all die.
I didn't fly on a plane until i was nearly 30. Dont know if you are in the US, but outside of the US, it's less common to fly anywhere. high speed rail between countries in europe, UK is small enough to drive anywhere, boats and eurostar train to get from UK to Europe. Euro tunnel if you want to take your car to europe.
Consider the amount of air its wings must displace in order to stay aloft. An equal quantity of mass at least. It's passing through that air and, partly pushing it down, but also partially scraping it thin over the bowed top surface of the wing (the Bernoulli principle) which creates a pressure differential that lifts the wing, pulling it upward through suction, and thus the plane. That's why the plane must go fast to fly, and why it "stalls" and falls if it isn't moving through enough air. It's also how turbulence affects a plane. Differences in air pressure mean that in pockets of low pressure there isn't as much mass being displaced by the wings, not enough lift so it falls.
Now, it's quite likely that my layman's comprehension of this is flawed. But I'm sure it's entirely possible that someone will correct me soon :3
To be pedantic: It’s not necessarily an equal amount of mass, it just has to accelerate (this includes deceleration which is acceleration opposing a component of a vector of travel) any amount of mass along and opposite to the vector of the plane’s acceleration due to gravity so long as the amount of mass (and the averaged amount of that mass’ acceleration in the aforementioned direction i.e. force) is in ratio with the planes mass and it’s acceleration due to gravity.
There’s a lot of other pedantic caveats but they’d make this comment far too long. The main thing I want to convey is that mass doesn’t necessarily matter but rather force (m*v) and also that the “suction” and thereby acceleration that a plane’s airfoil experiences is also it causing an acceleration on the air around it by decelerating it along the path that it wants to flow. It all depends on frame of reference.
I suck at explaining things, this video might do a better job at getting the idea across.
I fully expect to come back to lemmy in 48 hours to find a fascinatingly detailed and viciously incisive rebuttal that calls me at least three slurs in the first paragraph, sprinkles additional passive aggressive repudiations of my character throughout, and finishes with a tactical f-bomb too :D
I was most impressed by the sheer amount of power those engines put out when you finally take off. The acceleration gave me a boost of adrenaline when I flew for the first time (it was a Southwest Boeing 737)
It’s magical, right? It’s what got me interested in aviation - the physics, the science, the engineering to make it work. And we’ve gotten so good at it, air travel is now available to most people, it’s safe and convenient.
I’ve flown exactly three times in my life: a hot air balloon, a helicopter and a DC3. Each was magical in its own way. I’ve also done a fair bit of plane spotting. Seeing an Airbus A380 landing right in front of you is amazing. It really is the size of a large apartment block with wings. Truly awe inspiring.
You've flown or you've flown in? Presumable the former, but I know people from where I'm from use flown to mean flown in. If you've only been airborne three times, and all in separate crafts, that's something special in and of itself.
Flown in, as a passenger. I’d have said ‘piloted’ if I was the pilot.
And yes, that’s an odd trio of aircraft, considering most people only really fly on airliners. I’ve been on a Boeing 747 in a museum, but have never flown in an airliner.
I really enjoyed my helicopter ride as well - a sightseeing flight on vacation. That was on a Schweitzer S300; a small helicopter with a bench seat in the front. So you’re sitting right next to the pilot with an almost unobstructed forward vision. So cool. Definitely not something for people with a fear of heights.
Airplane engines have deceptively high thrust, imagine each one as a rocket and it'll start to make sense. The a380 (the big double decker) each engine produces around 350KN. When that thrust is applied to an 80kg human they'll experience almost 450Gs of force
In an extreme sense, imagine putting a little rocket engine on a paper airplane which will represent a high thrust to weight ratio
I fly a lot, and I think about this a lot. it's absolutely nuts.
I saw a diagram once explaining how planes fly, this is a good explanation of that:
"Airplane wings are shaped to make air move faster over the top of the wing. When air moves faster, the pressure of the air decreases. So the pressure on the top of the wing is less than the pressure on the bottom of the wing. The difference in pressure creates a force on the wing that lifts the wing up into the air."
so that's floating around the back of my mind while I sit in my air chair and think:
"and there we are.
We are climbing into the air again in the big flexible metal tube.
The wings have flex and they almost look like they are flapping in the wind right there.
Your arm flies when you stick it out a window, and it isn't shaped like shit, so does a piece of paper.
It's basically like a sail, but horizontally instead of vertically, the onrushing air hits the bottom at an angle, is deflected down, and bumps the wing up.
The rest is just to try to reduce drag on the top (super-critical wings attempting to maximize laminar flow, or at least make the disconnection as far back as possible so turbulence creates the least drag on the wing.
I'm partial to the Newtonian explanation myself, I was explaining my interest the first time I saw an illustration of the Bernoulli principle.
in fact, I just wrote about The Newtonian explanation a few minutes ago:
"the Newtonian makes more practical end complete sense to me sense to me as an explanation for a lift.
maybe the confusion comes from calling the motion of pushing air down "lift"
push-off.
hm. what the heck is an appropriate antonym for lift...
spring-hold.
oh, buoyancy?
maybe we should switch our talk from lift to buoyancy.
rather than generating lift, velocity through the air generates aerodynamic buoyancy due to the increase in downward pressure, or rather the compressed air beneath the airfoil."
My first experience in an airplane was quite different actually. In my mind as a child an airplane was this amazing thing that just flew, I had seen pictures of how it looked and thought it was a static thing that people sat in as it flew around.
The reality was quite different, the thing was a bit scoffed up and looked used. I kept thinking how the seats look like the seats on a bus. Not dirty exactly, but used looking and the kind of material you don't see stains too well and cleans easily. The noise was a lot to handle, not just the roar of the engines and the sound of the air going past, but all of the groins and creaks. And it wasn't static at all, everything was shaking and moving around, panel gaps showing. I saw the wings go from hanging down to pointing up as the weight of the aircraft hung from the wings. In my mind metal was hard and shouldn't move as much as it did. Getting on and off was just a ramp that was shoved near the plane from the gate, with a gap in between a flap was laid over. It looked nothing like the high-tech environment I imagined. And flying through the air wasn't as I imagined, at those speeds it's more like being under water than going through nothing as I imagined. The plane reacts to currents in the air, getting pushed to the sides and up and down, not the perfectly straight and stable ride I imagined.
So in the end I decided a plane is very much like a bus and that makes sense as it does pretty much the same thing, carry a bunch people from a to b all of the time.
The only thing that surprised me was at take off how much power the thing has. In a bus the engine is usually very underpowered, just enough to get up to speed in the most efficient way. With an airplane the power to weight ratio is crazy, it's more like driving a really fast car than a bus. But other than at take off, it's pretty much a bus.
I went to my second monster truck show a couple years ago. Took my nephew with me. The first time I was a kid and we had to leave because the noise made my bitch ass little brother cry.
They've come so far! They're doing front flips now in those trucks! Highly recommend it for anyone. I was 39 at the time and I loved every minute.
I am a avgeek (aviation) and I love all things planes. Got my PPL and made it halfway through instrument before bailing but damn it, flying is the best thing in the world and aviation itself is absolutely fucking beautiful.
Due to the nature of my work I've flown hundreds of passenger flights of all sizes and I still find myself in awe.
What a privilege to be able to actually see down from such a range of heights too. Where there is still lots of detail to be found, but you can also get an appreciation of scale. It's honestly really amazing.
you want to really bend your brain about airplanes, go looknhow the air conditioning on a big jet works. the phrase "air pack" will help in your search. I don't know which is more impressive, that it actually works or that someone thought of it.
In fitting natural conditions your house can fly too, just not whole and not for long
I mean, it's crazy, but I'm more fascinated with smaller airplanes. Imagine it, you can make something like a Piper Cub almost as easy\hard as 1000 years ago it was to make a good hauberk.
And for those mentioning computers - my feeling is the same about computers. It's nice to have a laptop with Linux or FreeBSD (not counting corporate malware), but a machine much simpler, but one that can be produced entirely in an area of 10mln people, full chain, would be much cooler for me.
I'm in awe of distributed production lines being possible and allowed by today's machinery.
I think that is something we have to rediscover. Centralization is stifling humanity's advancement. At the same time in the real world rather unpleasant people's power depends on it, so it won't be quick or easy. But I think it is happening anyway, just very slowly. Evolution, not revolution. Surely I would be glad for it to be a revolution, to see it as a (yet) young person.
Most manufacturing of things like computer chips (just the chips themselves) require raw materials from all over the world. You can't just use any sand. 10M people is just a little more than the population of NYC.