• Question: a car runs on a engine so does a plane then why doesn't a car fly

    Asked by to Naomi on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      For starters the engines are very different – on a plane they are engineered very differently, have thrust (to overcome gravity and resistance) and are much more powerful than cars. Planes also have propellers and wings!

      Hope this answers you question, aishurulz123!

Comments

  • Photo: Ian

    Ian commented on :

    There’s actually a saying in motor racing that if you turned an F1 car upside down it would be able to drive along the ceiling.

    The shape of the wings on a plane are designed to create lift, so as the propeller/jets move it forwards, the air flowing over the wings sucks the plane up into the air.

    Racing cars actually use the exact same shape, but turn it upside down. To go super fast you want the tires to be really grippy, and to do that the car needs to stay firmly connected to the road – if the car lifts up into the air at all, then it would skid, or worse. Race cars have “wings” that are upside down, so that as the air flows over them the same force that lifts a plane up, pushes the car down into the road, so it can go faster. An F1 car weighs about 1500Kg, but the extra push it gets from the air moving over the wings is actually MORE than that. If it was upside down, on the roof of a tunnel the push from the wings would be enough to lift it off the ground.