This power of a weighted plane to glide, even when no motive power is
attached to it, may be demonstrated quite simply by the little paper
model seen in Fig. 21. If, when you have made this, you allow it to
flutter from your hand without any weight attached, the model plunges,
dips, and dives; it has no forward motion, therefore it has no stability
or poise. But when you gum the small cardboard weight to its fore-plane,
the action of the model is changed. By the use of this tiny strip of
cardboard you have, so to say, given it an engine; you have provided it
with means whereby it can obtain forward motion, and so glide through
the air. When you hold it as shown in the sketch, with the weighted
fore-plane tilted downward, and release it without a jerk, the tendency
for the model is to fall to the ground as it did before. But now there
is the weight to reckon with: this pulls the model forward and downward,
tending to fall more quickly, of course, than the paper by itself would
do. But there is also the plane behind the falling weight to be taken
into consideration: jerked forward and downward through the air, this
begins to exercise a sustaining influence, and so resists the falling
movement of the weight. Still the weight, actuated by the force of
gravity, pulls downward. But the plane refuses to fall sheer to the
ground; and yet the weight must have its way. So, as in most situations
of this kind, there is a compromise. The falling weight pulls; the
plane resists; and in a flash the model starts upon a graceful glide.
Its plane is fulfilling its task of bearing it through the air; and the
weight is carrying out its mission also, in causing the glide to tend
earthward. So, pulled down by its weight and yet partly sustained by its
plane, the model will pass across a room; and if its plane and its
weight are in a nice adjustment, one may see a pretty manœuvre before it
reaches the floor. As it is swept faster through the air, owing to the
increasing drag of the weight, the plane of the model acquires a greater
lifting influence; and the moment comes when this “lift,” reaching a
maximum, checks altogether the descending movement, and causes the model
actually to ascend. Up indeed it goes, for a second, in a sudden swerve.
But this ascending impulse is soon checked; gravity cannot be denied.
The model loses speed; and, as it loses speed, so does its plane lose
lift. Hence the weight is again the predominating partner; it pulls down
the fore-plane, converts the rise into a fall, and brings the model with
another dive to the floor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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