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The Engineering Behind Aircraft

Air crafts play a really important role in modern transport and globalisation, by moving people and goods faster and more efficiently. Many researches also state that air travel is one of the saftes mode of transportation, but have you ever wondered what are the secrets behind its motion and design? This article will narrate the untold story of the science behind the air craft.

Air travel has three main components: take off, landing , and turning while flying.

Take off:

Simple Explanation :

Before knowing how air crafts generate lift, it is essential to know how they move forward. They achieve this using a turbofan engine. This engine relies on Newton’s third law: It generates a thrust force by pushing air backwards.

Complex Explanation :

The hot air from fuel in the combustion chamber drives a turbine , which rotates, in a clock wise direction , causing a large turbofan at the air inlet to suck air(for centripetal motion in a clockwise direction, angular acceleration is in the backward direction) inwards , which is heated in a compressor , and then further heated in a combustion chamber , thus driving the turbines at the narrower outlet and escaping at high speed due to thermal expansion. The lift is caused by the air foil shape of the wing(if you closely observe the wing, it has a curved shape , so the air flowing over it slides down , pushing the plane up by Newton’s third law).

Turning while flying:

While flying , in order to change direction, one aileron (wing component) of 1 wing is lowered(increasing the curvature and lift) and the aileron of the other wing is raised (increasing drag and reducing lift). This causes the plane to rotate, and the lift force on the wings to develop a horizontal component, and as the thrust force is perpendicular to this horizontal component, a centripetal force is developed, causing the plane to follow a circular path, until the desired direction is reached and the ailerons are adjusted back to normal.

Landing:

While landing , wing flaps are raised (to offer drag and reduce lift) and the elevators(a tail component) at the tail are lowered, to generate lift at the tail and lower the plain nose(as a moment is generated if lift is reduced at the wings and increased at the tail). The speed and thrust are also reduced by controlling the fuel in the engine.

For more information – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyeX6ArxCYI

We hope you enjoyed learning how the plane flies and let us know about any doubts.

Happy Science – ing !

AUSTRALIAN WILD FIRES

Recently Australia faced one of their worst bushfire seasons they’ve ever had. With the fires engulfing over 10 million hectares of Australian land, demolishing anything that stood in their paths. It is estimated that nearly 8,400 koalas have fallen prey to the fires on the mid-north coast of New South Wales and the kangaroo island in south Australia have lost 50% of their koala population. These bushfires with the on-going excessive tree-clearing for agricultural and urban development have acted as a catalyst in the decline of the koala species with only 80,000 koalas left in the wild. With the mass fires destroying most of the eucalyptus trees koalas were recently declared to be functionally extinct.

The Australian bushfires are a common event happening each year. The fires are given their own season -the fire season. The fires can take place any time during the year but the recent most fires of 2019-2020 are seen to be the worst ones. The fires are not always harmful to nature, the nature is seen to cope. The fires cause larger trees to fall leaving way to smaller trees to grow and cherish only for fires to wipe them out again, this can be called the circle of life. Which raises the question that if the fires are normal then what’s causing a problem? The answer is the “Indian ocean dipole” which is simple the difference in the temperatures of the east and west side of the Indian ocean. Which at the moment has seen the east to be cooler than average and west to be hotter than average leading the winds to flow towards Africa causing floods in Africa and droughts in Australia, yet again this is also normal. But our reckless behavior pushes climate change, more cars, more fossil fuels and more emissions have lead to a harsher environment, and a greater difference in the temperatures of the east and west of the Indian ocean. This climate change leads the trees to be dry and tinder and not damp, the fact that trees are dryer than what they should be allows the fires to spread at a more rapid pace.

Yet some people seem to ignore the fact that an impact of this scale can end up having a significant and lasting effect on all of us. The carbon dioxide released from these bushfires are so massive that glaciers in New Zealand, that are 4000 kms away from the fires are caramelizing causing the white snow to turn dark. We wear white or lighter coloured clothes in summer as these colours reflect the sunlight, the darker the colour of the snow gets the more sunlight its seen to absorb and the faster they melt. Which means that whatever carbon dioxide we release results in more glaciers melting. Costal cities such as Shanghai, Miami and Mumbai have less than 30 years left. The carbon emissions from these fires has been estimated to take a century to be naturally absorbed.

We can’t reverse what’s already happened but what we can do is help making things a little better. By making donations you can invest your money into something you know is for a better cause. You can also help by reducing your carbon footprint by following the 5 “R” S;

Refuse – single use plastic

Reduce – your purchases

Reuse – your products

Rot – your wet waste

Recycle – your dry waste

It’s the small steps that we take today that make our tomorrow, if we don’t carry out these steps now we won’t have a tomorrow. Its time for people to change, its time to start believing, climate change is real and its not waiting for us to change before it changes the face of our very earth.

Donate Now! https://donate.wwf.org.au/donate/koala-crisis/koala-crisis?t=AP0120O01&f=41120-213&gclid=Cj0KCQiAvJXxBRCeARIsAMSkAprD22FNgHgRmkuwhjVEcX6TKG3qva1bosLoeBjulDnbkp6qoUeisDEaAv0-EALw_wcB

About the Stem Club

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