Flight Science

The science of flight, explained in a fun and painless way!

Newton’s Second Law of Motion

Acceleration depends on the Force Applied In scientific gobble-de-speak, Newton’s 2nd Law says: The change of momentum of an object is proportional to the force applied, and happens in the direction that the force is applied. But what the heck does that mean??? After we talk about it you will probably think it is...

Lift versus Weight There are a number of “forces” acting on an aeroplane that we need to know about. The first of these is “weight”. Everything that is heavy has weight, but what is weight? You probably know this already… WEIGHT is the force which makes things fall down. In aviation, of course, we...

Newton’s First Law of Motion

Newton’s Laws Before talking more about how an aeroplane flies we need to look at some basic scientific ideas. In 1687 a very smart guy called Isaac Newton wrote a book in which he explained HOW and WHY things move, keep moving, and eventually stop. He came up with 3 laws to explain this....

In Feel the Lift our technical genius Thrust Master showed you how you can feel the power of lift by sticking your hand out the car window. He suggested that, while a plane that looked like this COULD work, there might be a better shape to make the wings. An actual aeroplane wing looks...

Warning This experiment involves sticking your hand out the window of a moving car. This may be ILLEGAL in some countries, and should only ever be done where safe and with the permission of the driver of the car.