Dr Karl

It's not quite right.

In fact, it's kind of wrong, but there's a fair bit of truth in it.

The second version is that the air splits as it goes over the wing.

The wing is curved.

It travels faster over the top of the wing and then it has less pressure.

So moving air has less pressure and you can prove this by next time you're drinking in a cafe or something, make sure you've got a transparent straw and then blow over the top of the straw and

and the liquid level will rise in the straw.

So moving air has lower pressure and you can prove that by blowing over the top of a straw that's transparent, you know, like you're having a milkshake or something.

You can even get a better effect if you blow through a straw at the top of the straw and then you get a really concentrated air blast and that's called the Bernoulli effect and that's not quite right because there are planes that have got dead flat wings, top and bottom,

like the Pitts Specials, which are aerodynamic planes, and they fly perfectly fine with a dead flat wing.

Then the third one is called the Cutter-Junkowski effect, and that's part of the reason that's also wrong.

So the best thing is to go to my podcast, Shirtloads of Science, and I'll interview an aeronautical engineer...

who has been teaching aeronautics for the last 30, 40 years, and he realised that everything is wrong, and he came up with a better explanation.

But that gets you started.

So the first one is that the wing is slightly tilted up, and so when you're travelling in a plane at altitude, I think the nose is up by about one or two degrees compared to the tail.

And that's providing most of the lift.

And by the way, that noise you heard, mate, I'm just astonished.

You've got this 100-tonne, 200-tonne plane and you accelerate uphill.

You're going uphill and you go from 200 kilometres an hour up to just under 1,000.

And you're going uphill and you're accelerating.