Aerodynamics for Dummies

We don’t know if aerodynamics is really a subject for dummies, per se, but if you are interested in flying or building drones and model aircraft, [Jenny Ma’s] new video that you can see below will help you get an easy introduction to some key concepts. (Embedded below.)

The show starts with coverage of lift, thrust, and drag, but moves on to topics such as stalling and coffin corners. If you have a pilot ticket, you might not learn a lot of new things, but for the rest of us, there are some interesting nuggets that you might not have known or might have forgotten from your physics classes in high school.

Actually, some of us are old enough that we learned an incorrect theory of how wings generate lift in school, and [Jenny] covers that and explains how we now know that the cause and effect of that theory were backward.

Speaking of bad theories, the video covers subsonic flight, although there is a little discussion of supersonic flight. Remember that before the X1 broke the sound barrier in 1947, many people thought it was not possible to do that.

This video won’t prepare you for designing the next jumbo jet or X1, but it might just help you next time you want to build a novel quadcopter or even a paper airplane.