Scientific American (nonfiction)
Scientific American, informally abbreviated SciAm or sometimes SA, is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Prize-winners having been featured since its inception.
In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. Scientific American is owned by Springer Nature, which is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
April 2006: In the “Working Knowledge” column titled “Jet Engines—Big Squeeze” by Mark Fischetti, there is a description of how an airplane wing generates lift. It states (in the classic but incorrect “equal transit time” version of the Bernoulli explanation): “...because the wing top is curved, air streaming over it must travel farther and thus faster than the air passing underneath the flat bottom. According to Bernoulli's principle, the slower air below exerts more force on the wing than the faster air above, thereby lifting the plane.”
August 2006: The “Letters to the Editors” section includes a letter from Klaus Fritsch (Department of Physics, John Carroll University) that directly criticizes the April article’s explanation of wing lift as misleading and incorrect. It points out that the curvature/equal-transit-time account cannot explain how planes can fly upside down (with the curved surface on the bottom) and offers the Newtonian deflection-of-air explanation as better. The magazine’s reply from Fischetti acknowledges that numerous readers wrote in to correct the “common but faulty explanation” that has persisted for years (even in some textbooks).
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External links
- Scientific American @ Wikipedia
