Take off!

The first time I was on an airplane I was 4 months old and I have continued to fly since that initial flight. I loved everything about flying, but as I have grown, I have found I am much more nervous. Every time that little seat belt sign dings, I think, “Dang, this is it.”

There have been a few experiences that have helped make flying much less intimidating for me. One is having a very good friend, Coy, who is a pilot and who I constantly inundate with questions. The other is an exhibit we had at ExplorationWorks in which the scientific principles of flight were the focus. Both of these have made me much more confident about why it is we are able to fly.

To fly, airplanes need to overcome drag and gravity and they succeed in doing this because of lift and thrust. Drag is countered by thrust and that is from the giant engines moving the plane forward. Lift is dependent on the unique shape of the wing, called an airfoil. The two main principals that are used to help explain lift are Bernoulli’s principle and Newton’s third law of motion.

Bernoulli’s principle states the faster the moving fluid the lower the pressure the fluid has. When air is racing across the wing, it is going across the top of the wing faster than under. This low pressure on top and high pressure underneath helps create lift.

Isaac Newton said for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We had an exhibit that demonstrated this very well and you can feel it if you stick your hand out of the car window while on the interstate. If you hold your hand out and angle it up, the air hitting it causes it to go up. While these principles ease my mind, they have nothing to do with what really makes me anxious.

When I hear the seat belt sign ding on, it is usually because of turbulence. In one of my discussions with Coy he assured me the bumps we feel in the air are no more dangerous then when we drive over a bump in our car. Right, 30,000 feet is not nearly as dangerous as 3 feet! Coy does have a point however.

 Turbulence is caused by a number of factors and airplanes encounter it every day. Turbulence is caused by movement of air flow. These changes are the result of warm air rising and cold air sinking, the movement of high altitude air currents, air moving around mountains and even movement from other planes.

I called Coy to ask if it was OK to use his name in my column and he said of course. I also asked if he had any quotes that he would like for me to use to which he replied, “Every landing you walk away from is a good one.”

I hope the science in this column instills more trust in flying than his quote.