682
Trump says ‘no one knows what magnets are’ during bizarre Oval Office exchange
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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politics
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There was a British comedian I remember from a while back.... Matt something... that talked about meeting a Texan couple on a plane once and the wife expressed her amazement at the marvel of flight, which is fair because flight is pretty amazing. But instead of just being amazed, she then said something like, "we'll never know how it all works". Like a collective we, like everyone. Like she thinks that aerospace engineers are just guessing, trying out throwing shapes into the sky until something doesn't drop to the ground. "Nope. Sphere didnt do it. Probably shouldn't have filled that one with people, either. Let's try the cube next!"
Some people are so stupid they don't realize that they are stupid and that plenty of people, MOST people, in fact, are smarter than them and understand a lot of stuff they don't. Like it's not even Dunning-Kreuger because they dont know the first thing about the subject at all, and they will even admit that often times. Just unadulterated hubris to assume their ignorance is universal.
Everything is simple if you don't know anything about it.
Isn't there some question about the specifics of the mechanism of lift itself? Not like "this shouldn't be possible!" but more "it's easier to explain than it is to understand"
No, the science and engineering is well understood and can be calculated entirely in models that use this knowledge to precisely predict thinks like lift and drag. There is no guess work or mystery about it.
However the common "facts" that we are often taught as explanation to children and the layperson for lift are wrong and/or incomplete. The Equal Transit Theory, i.e. the idea that when a wing splits the air, the air above and below must meet at the same time on the back of the wing causing the air on top to have to move faster due to the greater distance to travel, is just not true.
However that lower pressure above the wing that doesnt actually result from the Equal Transit Theory, that part is true. It is caused by the deflection of air on the underside of the wing causing the higher pressure underneath and lower pressure over the top. Lower pressure over the wing does in fact cause a component of lift due to Bernoulli's Principle. But it is also not the entirety of the source of lift. Other components include the Coanda Effect from the curvature of the wing redirecting air downward, as well as the just simple propulsion caused by the propeller(s)or jet(s) and downward deflection of air hitting the underside of the wing, which is basic Newtonian motion (3rd law).
Huh, okay. I don't really keep up with all of the little fandoms, so thanks for that!
No
Having worked in my checkered past in aerospace for a decade or so, there's a very small grain of truth in that. While there is a lot of enginneering that goes back to first principles (physics and math), there are also what are euphemistically called "empirically determined constants." That's because, even when the equations are known, they can sometimes be a pig to actually compute ("ill-conditioned"), requiring absurd amounts of computer power.
So if I were on the plane next to that couple, I'd have said "Yep, we're flyin' on a wing and a prayer and there's a non-zero chance we could auger into the ground at any time. But don't fret, it doesn't happen all that often."
Ignorance is bliss.
The God Emperor of man wills it, that's how flight works