Question: why do aeroplanes stay up

Oli Wilson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

Because if they didn’t stay up they’d just be weird, wide cars?
I’m joking, partly because I’m not 100% sure of the answer. As far as I understand it it’s a mix of science, engineering and magic… Part of the explanation is that the shape of the plane’s wing makes air going underneath it slow down, but doesn’t much affect air going over the top. That means there are more molecules of air below the wing than above it, and that higher air pressure underneath the wing pushes it upwards – you have lift! I found the gifs on this page helpful for showing the difference in air speeds and pressures (you can really see how the air gets bunched up below the wing), but I hardly understood the words at all! http://www.diam.unige.it/~irro/profilo1a_e.html
I think there’s more to it than that (something about how the air swirls off the back of the wing, making a vortex/lots of vortices), but I understand that even less than the air speed bit! Maybe ask Kerrianne – she’s a physicist and might have a better grasp of it than me! Now if you want to know about how albatrosses fly 10,000 miles without flapping its wings, *that’s* something I can talk about! 😉