Jumbo jets... Have you ever wondered how those things stay in the sky?

In this Virtually Rick we look at the science of flight. Or in other words: How do huge chunks of metal stay up in the air?

In the United States, there are 44,000 flights every day, peaking at around 5,000 planes in the sky at once. That’s over a million people, basically the entire population of San Jose, floating above our heads. 

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But how do they get up there?

Let’s use the world’s biggest commercial passenger aircraft; the Airbus A380.

With a wingspan bigger than a 747, that’s like the leaning tower of Pisa with seven elephants on top! And when it’s fully loaded with 500 passengers it weighs over 600 tons (maybe even more after lunch has been served!). It’s heavy. It’s about the weight of three blue whales. 

So how do you get something that heavy off the ground? To understand that — it’s time to talk about the birds and the bees!

OK, just the birds, their wings to be specific.

A basic wing splits the air coming towards it in two directions: above and below. And because of it’s shape, the “camber,” the air moves faster over the top than underneath. Even faster if you add and some jet engines.

The air above the wing is lower pressure, the air beneath is higher pressure. Sound counter-intuitive? Yes!

But in order to explain why THAT is, we’ll need scientists Bernoulli and Newton to have a fight which we don’t have time for. And they’re both dead.

So let’s simplify: It’s that pressure difference which creates an upward force called 'lift.' Couple that with speed and something called the 'angle of attack,' and you’re in business. Ever stuck your hand out of a car window when it’s driving fast? Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Angle your hand up, you’ll feel it being pushed upwards and the faster the car goes will create more thrust and lift. Handy! Hopefully you’ll have one left after that experiment...

So get the plane moving fast on the runway, up to 180 mph, and you’ll increase the pressure under the wings, adjust the angle of attack and soon you reach a critical moment where thrust and lift overcome the weight and drag of the plane and VOILA!

You’re up in the sky! 

Then it’s about staying there until you reach your destination which is absolutely preferred by everyone. And that happens at a higher altitude, up to around 38,000 feet, six miles up, where the air is thinner, easier to zip through and you’ll also need less fuel to reach 500 mph.

But why do these massive mechanical monsters appear to hover in the air as they’re coming in to land? A number of reasons.

They’re slowing up when they’re approaching by decreasing the power (because landing at 500 mph might be a problem) using the angle of attack also helps.

Then add to that the fact that humans are terrible at guesstimating the speeds of far away objects, especially in a big, blue sky with nothing else up to compare it too and voila! An optical illusion that 600 tons of metal are hovering above your head.

So there you have it — flight — in a nutshell. And planes specifically, that is until Uber invents 'Hover pants' then we’re all doomed!