Commercial Airplanes: How Giants of the Sky Take Flight

Have you ever watched a giant airplane rumble down the runway and wondered — how does something that heavy actually get off the ground? The secret is a force called LIFT. When air moves faster over the curved top of a WING than under its flat bottom, it creates lower pressure above and higher pressure below. That difference in pressure pushes the wing upward, lifting the whole plane into the sky. This amazing discovery comes from a principle studied by a scientist named Daniel Bernoulli, and engineers use it every time they design a new AIRCRAFT. The shape of the wing that makes this happen is called an AIRFOIL (AIR-foyl), and it is one of the greatest engineering tricks ever invented.