Anon, it took one hundred years of trial and errors in design and mechanical failures, resulting in hundreds of deaths, to perfect the dark arts of aviation.
Nono they're right about basically all but the no reason and ignoring gravity part. The fact that we can design an airframe that stays together under those kinds of forces is indeed absolutely crazy.
I think large planes "look" like they can't work because their "relative speed" is really low --- that is, their speed relative to their length. We're used to seeing birds cover tens of lengths per second, whereas a large airliner covers ~1ish per second at takeoff.
Or not, but this always seemed like a plausible explanation as to why planes look impossible. (Though given that hovering birds don't look funny, maybe this is a silly observation...).
Though given that hovering birds don't look funny, maybe this is a silly observation...
Birds flying against the wind and staying in the same spot as a result do look kinda weird though. Especially if you are not aware/don't notice there is strong winds
That's a really thoughtful take, I'm glad you shared. I think it has merit. I think proximity is a factor too. The public rarely gets up close to a jet, but I can attest from personal experience they seem much faster when you're closer during takeoff and landing.
Also weird how giant steel tankers float on the ocean. Especially when they're weighed down by all that cargo. It's practically unbelievable. I throw a tiny rock in the ocean, and it sinks...but not those giant steel boats? /s
Well... When you put one of those huge tankers in the water, it will move a LOT of water out of the way.
As long as the tanker weights less than the weight of all that water it displaced, it will float.
As you keep loading up the tanker with more cargo, it will go deeper into the water right? But this means that it is pushing more water out of the way (the water that used to be where the boat now is), which balances out the weight because that creates more buoyancy.
A rock, on the other hand, is heavier than the water that it displaces, so it sinks like a tanker whose front fell off.
As long as the tanker weights less than the weight of all that water it displaced, it will float.
But that's only because of the spell that the ancient Wizard Archimedes cast in the elder days. Archimedes didn't discover his principle, he molded reality to follow his rule.
The tanker weights exactly as much as the weight of the water that it displaces. They are in balance. You describe it yourself. The tanker sinks deeper if it becomes heavier and swims more up as it becomes lighter.
The measure of "boat swims" is not the weight of the displaced water. It is wether there is some boat wall left sticking out of the water to keep more water from entering and displacing the air that keeps the submerged volume in weight balance with the water.
Metal is heavier than water. Virtually every containber is fille to the brim with products, now I don't know you but most everything we buy is heavier than water.
It's clear they have some kind of extra propulsion in those, most likely magnetic anti gravitation.
Next time you see a plane imaging two hooks in the middle of the wings, a crane lifting up the plane with these two hooks and shaking it.
This give you a good approximation of what the forces in the plane are, and once you picture that you might think that there is no way the plane can hold up in this situation. Yet it does.
And they WOULD break, eventually, if they weren't engineered to a statistically determined inspection interval and replaced/repaired at the determined overhaul time.
Well I must admit, when the plane is resting on the ground, the wings droop down a lot. Then when airborne it's the other way around, the wings curve upwards as the fuselage hangs from them. In my mind nothing that big made of metal should be able to flex that much.
But since I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I have learned about material science, airplane design and engineering. And I have found out that it does indeed flex that much. It also isn't that thick, since it's only a skeleton wrapped with a very thin layer of metal. In fact if it didn't flex as much, it would be weaker and not stronger.
So the thing I really learnt is never to trust intuition when it comes to things like this.
Hey now. Let's not blame gay people for the common-sense-defying demon-wizard sorcery that engineers get up to when someone threatens to take away their calculators and caffeine.
I don't know how you got to "culture war and homophobia"? It's literally a meme phrase that's used (often sarcastically) in response to stories on the internet. Saying something is "fake and gay" is literally shitposting, I think interpreting any deeper meaning into it is a bit of a stretch.
Edit: I just realised that this is a greentext community... half the comments here are either fake or gay, and OPs post is most definitely both.