Hm, I was hoping this article would explain in what sense we don't understand flight, or in what sense people think we don't understand flight, but it didn't seem to answer that question...
Although the common explanations are often BS.
I learned it multiple times. In middle school, in high school, in university, on youtube explained by a quantum physicist.
Everytime I understood less of it.
So it's better to say that our models are simplified, not lies.
To be fair, for most purposes (atoms, molecules, metals) there usually (very-) technically aren't any electrons, just configurations of the relevant quantum fields (eg in the form of electron orbitals) whose asociated conserved quantities would allow them to convert into a certain number of free-flying electron particles if you dumped in enough energy to make up the difference.
You see this a bit more obviously with ('virtual'[0]) photons, where some non-particulate field configurations simply can't be thought of as particles at all (eg attactive electromagnetic forces).
0: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-ph...
There are no quantum fields either, just as there are no atoms. Things (of the right size) behave as if there they were composed of quantum fields (or electrons or atoms), and the less we have to say "... except that ...", the more comfortable we are with the story.
I look at "quantum computer" components and go "what does a grid of wires have to do with 'computing'? And then you realize the big secret - There's regular computers that take the 'output' of the qubits/QC stuff and 'decide' what the results are, since it's all just a blob of probability anyhow...
Unfortunately I don't remember what book I used. But yeah, this definitely opened my eyes to how electricity works.
Isn’t that how to spot seniority? The junior says “I know ReactJS and SpringBoot!” The senior says: “I don’t know much…”
Unrelated, but that reminds me how my Masters Degree teachers touted the importance of their subject in their introduction course, all explaining the Ariane V explosion from a completely different angle:
- The measurements professor: “Ariane V crashed because engineers tripped themselves into different imperial/metric units, this is why Measurements & Precision is the most important topic!”
- The programming teacher: “They fit a long inside an integer and it looped to negative, which inverted the trajectory of Ariane V and triggered its destruction, this is why learning C properly is the core of your teaching this year.”
- The quality assurance teacher: “They didn’t check the contract of the component! This is why QA is the most important when creating big systems!”
- The management teacher: “It’s the story of two teams who designed two components with different assumptions, one team worked in imperial units and they didn’t communicate clearly about assumptions, that’s why management is the one topic you should really work on.”
They were all right. Or rather, they were all wrong: Everyone knows Ariane V exploded because the officer pushed a red button ;)
...and this is why learning the value of drawing the boundaries and selecting stop points in the analysis of complex topics, and the employment of humor is a powerful rhetorical tool. This is why you composition is the most important topic this semester!
Sorry... Couldn't resist. <Queue the follow up psychology is the most important topic you'll learn this semester, followed by Biology, Social Psychology, Anthropology, all getting stucktrying to get in the door.
Also, what school teaches QA These days?
Interesting question! INSA Lyon in France, but that was in 2005, you could mock that the Old Continent does a lot of V-Cycle waterfall projects and had missed the Agile turn of 2001.
BUT learning how processes help is, instead, a very important step to judge what exactly we give up with Agile.
The irony is I went on creating software for requirements, and I can testify that all of the hardware industry does QA more diligently than ever!
Software Quality Assurance is much more... Spongey.
You'll see this regularly in the series Aviation Disasters on TV. It has lessons for all engineering projects. I watch every episode :-)
They reused the launch code of Ariane 4 in Ariane 5, but Ariane 5 was much faster to take off. It was an overflow on the acceleration and bad testing because reading an Ada exception as flight data is not great.
We learn that at school in France many years later.
There are some old controversies that are largely settled. The Microsoft Flight Simulator manual in 1980 "teached the controversy" but it was really settled decades before that. People still remember the controversy from back then and keep repeating it and probably will still do it when people are living in space colonies.
The Bernoulli effect explanation is bogus.
An alternate (correct) explanation is that if you just took a piece of cardboard, held it sideways, and moved it laterally it would push the air down and thus the cardboard would be pushed up.
If you like vector fields you can show that there is a topological defect (vortex ring) that is threaded through the wings and comes around to the other side. If you do an integral around the ring you can show the vortex holds the plane up.
I hear this but never seem to get any further info. Why are wings shaped with a curved top and flat bottom? Is there a good summary I can go read to understand this all?
AFAIK the wing shape thing is about reducing drag (turbulence?)–not essential but hard to fly well without a nicely shaped wing.
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/foam_wi...
When learning about flight, keep asking yourself "Then how do planes fly upside down?" Any explanation which does not mesh with sustained, inverted flight is oversimplified to the point of uselessness and inaccuracy.
Most wings aren't shaped like that.