How do planes fly? Please not rude answers. My five year old daughter is asking this question.?

One of the devices I use to explain to children why planes fly is to take a small rectangle of light paper, say 2" by 4" and hold one end against your chin immediately below your lower lip. The paper should droop toward the ground as you hold it there. Then gently blow across the top of the paper. The loose end of the paper will rise to the level of the breath you are blowing out. You have created a low pressure area over the top of the paper and it rises in accordance. A wing flies for the same reason. Of course this is greatly simplified, but you did say it was for a 5 year old.

This will be very tough to answer for a 5 year old because many adults can't grasp the concept. In layman's terms and a "Fred Flintstone" point of view, you can demonstrate the concept by standing your little girl on the bathroom scales and have her spread her "wings" by holding her arms out from her sides. Have her look at the scales to see how much she weighs, then grasp her under each armpit and begin gently lifting upwards - noting that the more pressure you exert upwards against the bottom of her arms, the less she weighs on the scales. When you apply more upward pressure on her wings than she weighs, her weight will drop to zero and she will lift off the scales and become "airborne". The curved upper surface of an airplane wing makes the air going over the wing take a longer journey to the trailing edge of the wing than the air moving straight along the flat underside of the wing. The air's longer journey over the top of the wing makes it stretch out (so to speak) and become less dense than the straight-line air flow beneath the wing. This means the air pressure under the wing (more dense air) is higher than the pressure above the wing (less dense air). The faster the wing moves through the air, the greater this pressure difference becomes - just like you gradually increasing the lift under your little girl's arms. Once there is sufficient speed through the air to create enough upward difference in air pressure (under the entire wing surface) to overcome the weight of the plane, it too will lift off the ground. Going even faster through the air will continue to increase the lifting force under the wings; so moving the rear control surfaces of the wing up or down will manually adjust the difference in above-wing and under-wing pressure to manually cause the plane to climb or decend in altitude. Gee, now I'm even confused :-)

Try this link from NASA web page for kids http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/home/F_How_Do_Planes_Fly_Text.html

If you are in a car on high way put your arm out side the window and see the effect of air on it and you will be able to understand that

This worked for me with my 4 year old. The deflating balloon zipping around the room gives a perfect example of action and reaction. From a science fair, I got the inflatable adaptation with wings, tailplane and all. To be fair, it flies rather well in the room. Lift and drag would be too difficult for her to understand, try starting with Newton's 3rd law!

It has something to do with the shape of the wing. Its sorta flat on the bottom and rounded on top. The movement of the air over the wing(of course combined with the engine) creates lift.

It has something to do with suspension and aerodynamics, or in other words the way the plane is build makes it aerodynamically sound to not fall out of the sky as wind passes over it.. go to yahoo and search it.. you'll get a whole better concept there.

Bernoulli's principle. The shape of the wing allows air to flow faster on top of the wing than on the bottom. Because air travels faster on top, it creates a vacuum that 'lifts' the wing. The faster the air travels over the wing the more lift you get. For a child, its better to explain to her that planes wings catches the air. When the plane goes forward, the air pulls the plane up. To go forward, the plane has big engines that drives powerful fans to blow air to the back of the plane. This makes the plane go forward. As the plane goes forward, more air is caught in the wings and lifts the plane and makes it fly. Just ask her to run while holding a piece of cardboard on each hand mimicking wings. She should feel the lift as she runs forward.

Mostly to to the shape of the wing. The air is slightly faster over the wing then the air bottom of the wing. this creates a change of pressure. fast moving air has a lower pressure then slow moving air. The speed of the air over the wing is greater then speed under the wing. This cause a pressure change. This change causes lift as the air tries to establish a equilibrium. the complicated formula is p + pgh + ½pv² = constant p = density of air v = velocity of air p = pressure of air h = height in air g = acceleration Fully lowered flaps decrease the velocity of the air at the lower side of the wing and also increase the surface area in contact of the air. The overall speed of the plane is also decreases while maintain flight. that is why planes land with their flaps fully down and planes take off with flaps down, lift is also increased