At the ends of an airplane‘s wings, the pressure difference between air on top of the wing and air below it creates a swirling vortex that extends behind the aircraft. Keep reading
Tag: wingtip vortices
RC Ground Effect Plane
The ekranoplan was a massive, Soviet-era aircraft that relied on ground effect to stay aloft. In this video, RC pilots test out their own homemade version of the craft, including Keep reading
Tokyo 2020: Sailing Physics
At first glance, sailboats don’t look much like an airplane, but physics-wise, they’re closely related. Both the sail and hull of a sailboat act like wings turned on their side. Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2020
2020 was certainly a strange year, and I confess that I mostly want to congratulate all of us for making it through and then look forward to a better, happier, Keep reading
Contrails From 4 Engines
The wingtip vortices of aircraft provide a veritable cornucopia of gorgeous imagery. There’s something inherently fascinating about these vortices that stretch behind moving aircraft. But four-engine aircraft add an extra Keep reading
Gliding Birds Get Extra Lift From Their Tails
Gorgeous new research highlights some of the differences between fixed-wing flight and birds. Researchers trained a barn owl, tawny owl, and goshawk to glide through a cloud of helium-filled bubbles Keep reading
Vortices and Ground Effect
Though typically unseen, the vortices that swirl from the tips of aircraft wings are powerful. Here you see a Hawker Sea Fury equipped with a smoke system used to visualize Keep reading
Seeing the Wake
Hot exhaust gases churn in the wake of this climbing B-1B Lancer. The high temperature of the exhaust changes the density and, thus, the refractive index of the gases relative Keep reading
Sunset Vortices
Often our atmosphere’s transparency masks the beautiful flows around us. This spectacular image shows a flight landing in Munich just after sunrise. Low-hanging clouds get sliced by the airplane’s passage Keep reading
Quad Copter Schlieren
Schlieren photography is a classic method of flow visualization that utilizes small variations in density (or temperature) to make otherwise unseen air motion visible. Because changing air’s density or temperature Keep reading