Pointing out the incompleteness of the common or popular understanding of lift, based on bernoulli principle and the idea that the air flowing over either side of the wing must traverse the wing in the same time (the molecules that part at the leading edge must "meet" again at the trailing edge) has become the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel for amateur and professional aerodynamicists. It started with an article in Physics Teacher magazine in 1972 by N.F. Smith. There followed a long
line of revisionists who have tried their darndest to undo the popular misconceptions regarding the physics of lift.
Here''s a whole passel of variations on Raskin''s article. I like Anderson and Eberhardt''s article and book best because they do a little clearer job of explaining what is going on and where the misconceptions with the popular model are. Plus they cut right to the chase: What do Newton''s laws tell us about flight and lift?
http://www.aa.washington.edu/faculty/eberhardt/lift.htm
Other takes on this theme:
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~weltner/Flight/PHYSIC4.htm
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~waltham/air/FwB.pd
Finally, here''s another book (besides Anderson et al.) you can look for at the local library:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=4921&ttype=2
Linear Mode
