Measuring Lift with an Airfoil – The Physics of Flight 

Why does a plane stay in the air? Students often know “it’s lift,” but not what lift is or how to measure it. That’s where our PASCO sensors make physics take off.

Introduction

Take a sheet of paper and place it under your bottom lip and blow. The paper will move from being limp to pointing horizontally. Lets investigate why.

🛠 The Setup

We use a small airfoil model mounted on a retort stand with a large fan in front of it suspended by a PASCO force sensor. By controlling the airflow speed and angle of attack, students can record real-time force measurements as the wing interacts with the moving air.

📊 The Science

As the air flows faster over the curved top surface of the wing than under it, a pressure difference develops. According to Bernoulli’s principle, this creates lift. But it’s not just theory – the sensors show the numbers live on screen.

Students can:

• Plot lift vs angle of attack to see how too steep an angle stalls the wing.

• Compare lift at different airspeeds and discover why planes need long runways.

• Calculate the lift coefficient (Cl) from their data, just like real aeronautical engineers.

🎓 Why It Works in Teaching

The beauty of PASCO’s system is that the data is immediate, accurate, and student-led. Instead of being told “wings create lift,” students watch the graphs build in front of them. They see how lift grows, peaks, and eventually falls away when the wing stalls.

It transforms a textbook diagram into a live experiment where students discover the physics of flight for themselves.

And the best bit? When they next get on a plane, they’ll know the maths and science that are keeping them in the sky.