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Four Factors of an Aircraft in Flight

Decent Essays

“The human being is set apart from all other animals by an intelligent, reasoning mind. Another quality that humans seem to possess is an inherent drive to utilize that mind to achieve to recognize challenges and to attempt conquer them” (Smith, 1992, p. 1). One of my favorite person that I used to read about in high school was Benjamin Franklin; one of the founding Father of the United States of America and the master mind behind the invention of electricity. As stated in the words of Smith, the curiosity of Franklin lead him to discover how electricity works. This same driven factor of human mind was what led the Wrights Brother to invent and fly the first power aircraft. The four forces that are acting on an aircraft in flight are: Lift, Weight, Thrust and Drag. “The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall” (Wrights Brothers). One of the unique quality/ characteristic that differentiate aircraft from all other vehicles is its ability to get up in the air and stay for a long period of time. The force that raises an object into the air is called lift. The force that acts against this lift force is called weight. The left principle states that in order for an object to be lifted off the ground, the weight of that object should be less than the air surrounding it. Now you might be asking, why is it that aircraft which is heavier than car fly but car don’t? The answer to this question lies within the engineering of an aircraft. An aircraft has something

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