Wikijunior:How Things Work/Airplane Wing
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The wing is the part of airplane that enables it to rise into the air.
[edit] Who invented it?
Many people tried to invent a wing that would let people fly. Even the famous inventor, Leonardo da Vinci drew up plans for different ways of flying with wings like a bird. The first wing that let a person fly was in ancient China in the year 559. It was really just a large kite. In 877, long before Marco Polo and other explorers brought back information about Chinese kites to Europe, an Arab inventor in Spain named Abbas Ibn Firnas made the first hang glider, and tested it himself.
Sir George Cayley and later Otto Lilienthal created working gliders that allowed people to fly as long ago as the 1800s. The Wright Brothers were famous for the airplane that they first demonstrated in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but their airplane's wings worked in the same way as Otto Lilienthal's glider wings from 1891.
[edit] How does it get power?
The only power that a wing needs is to be moved forward through the air. In a glider the wing is either pushed to get it started, or it is brought somewhere high up and dropped, like a hang glider pilot starting from the top of a cliff. In a powered airplane, the engines push the wings forward using fuel.
The shape of a wing is very important. Because the wing is curved, the air going over it has to go further, so it moves faster and is more spread out than the air that goes below it. Air presses on everything around it, even though you can't feel it. When there is more air it puts more pressure on the things around it. The fast-moving, spread-out air over the top of the wing lets the air pressure on the bottom of the wing push the wing up, creating lift. It is the lift from the wings that carries a plane through the air.
[edit] How dangerous is it?
Airplane wings are not dangerous. Airplanes themselves have a good safety record when they are well maintained. There are risks with any travel and planes travel at high speeds.
[edit] What does it do?
An airplane wing is specially designed so that air that passes around it actually helps lift up the plane. It is also streamlined in shape so that the plane can move at maximum speed.
[edit] How does it vary?
All airplane wings contain flaps to increase lift and drag. Some airplane wings, especially those of larger jets, have spoilers that will further slow down the airplane. This is important in landing, where one must land at the slowest speed possible without stalling.
In larger airplanes the wings often have the engines fixed onto them.
[edit] How has it changed the world?
An airplane wing is one of the most fundamental things that allow a plane to fly. Without it, a plane does not fly and it has brought planes all over the world
[edit] What idea(s) and/or inventions had to be developed before it could be created?
The first plane had to be invented before any experimentation with the wing could occur. The earliest wings were simply light framed wooden planks, with no such inbuilt drag or lift functions.
