Air and the four forces of flight

This lesson asks you to identify flight-related applications of the properties of air and to describe the relationships between the four forces of flight: lift, weight, thrust and drag. The museum offers the report of Ibn Firnas's attempt at flight, set beside a modern NASA Glenn account of these forces and of gliding; any other applications of air have to come from your class. ¹

Draw a kite or a paper glider and put an arrow at each of the four forces to show its direction. Which arrow can you not draw on a glider that has no engine?

Write three places where you can see air acting on something that moves: a bird, a falling leaf, a ball. What changes in each example if the object moves faster?

Maqqari reports that Abbas ibn Firnas covered himself with feathers, fitted two wings and attempted flight, suffering injury on landing ². NASA Glenn's guide distinguishes weight towards Earth's centre, lift perpendicular to motion through air, drag opposing motion, and thrust from propulsion in a powered aircraft; an upward movement or a wing's presence alone does not demonstrate thrust, and the historical words "feathers" and "wings" provide no magnitude for these distinct forces ^{3 2}. The comparison explains terminology without adding an engine or measured muscular power to the account.

The record preserves no statement in which Ibn Firnas explains his purpose: the flight report names neither commissioner nor financier ². Maqqari places flight beside timekeeping, a representation of the heavens and poetry, among stories of ingenuity rather than in a specialized flight-observation notebook ⁴. Hasan Ibrahim Hasan invokes an early aspiration to flight ⁵.

The account can sound like proof of history's first airplane. The record says it is not certification of that, and that the "inventor" relationship identifies the claimed maker of the reported apparatus, not established global priority ².

The record says the words "feathers" and "wings" provide no magnitude for lift, weight, thrust and drag ². If the account were all you had, which of the four forces could you say something about, which could you not, and why?

• Abbas ibn Firnas: his life, the crafts attributed to him, and the limits of what is known.
• Ibn Firnas's reported winged flight: the four forces as NASA Glenn explains them, and what Maqqari and Hasan Ibrahim Hasan say.
• Cordoba: the city where he grew up and studied.

In the record of Ibn Firnas's attempt you will find NASA's account of the four forces. Draw a simple paper glider on paper only, label each force on it, and write why thrust does not appear on a glider. Do not try to jump from a height or to build wings.