When any airplane flies there are always 4 basic forces at work. Lift, Drag, Gravity and Thrust.

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/airplane1.htm

http://travel.howstuffworks.com/airplane1.htm

 

Thrust
Thrust is an aerodynamic force that must be created by an airplane in order to overcome the drag (notice that thrust and drag act in opposite directions in the figure above). Airplanes create thrust using propellers, jet engines or rockets. The A-10 uses 2 jet engines that can push 9,065 pounds a piece. These engines puch the aircraft forward so that lift can be created over the wings. A jet engine uses Newton's law's to work. Especially the third law. The engines push air out the back the reaction is that th eairplane moves forward.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/newton.html

Lift
Lift is the aerodynamic force that holds an airplane in the air On airplanes, most of the lift required to keep the plane aloft is created by the wings lift is created by air that is moved across the wings. As air moves over the wing it must move faster over the top than the bottom. Faster moving fluids have less pressure. This causes there to be less pressure on top of the wing so the plane can go up.

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Flight/advanced/forces-01.html

THis is the equation for lift.

Drag
Drag is an aerodynamic force that resists the motion of an object moving through a fluid.The amount of drag that is experiences depends on a few factors, such as the size of the airplane, the speed of the airplane and the density of the air. There are three kinds of drag, parasite drag, form drag, and skin friction.

 

Weight
This one is the easiest. Every object on earth has weight. Gravity pulls everything to its center at 9.8m/s

 

 

 

[HOME][FACTS][PHYSICS][PICS][BIBLIOGRAPHY]