Word of the Day
ALAE (AY-luh)
Wings, or Winglike structures
Common clues: Wings, in Latin; Mercury's ankle attachments; Caesar's wings
Crossword puzzle frequency: 2 times a year
Video: Slow motion sea gulls
A wing is a surface used to produce lift for flight through the air or another gaseous or fluid medium. The wing shape is usually an airfoil. The word originally referred only to the foremost limbs of birds, but has been extended to include the wings of insects (see insect wing), bats, pterosaurs, and aircraft.
A
Laughing Gull with its wings extended in a gull wing profile
A wing's aerodynamic quality is expressed as a Lift-to-drag ratio. The lift generated by a wing at a given speed and angle of attack can be 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than the drag. This means that a significantly smaller thrust force can be applied to propel the wing through the air in order to obtain a specified lift.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wings"
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