Doug McLean | Common Misconceptions in Aerodynamics

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters point to it as a credible debunking of the popular but wrong explanations of how wings generate lift.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Michigan Engineering

Topic

aerodynamic lift

Format

talk

Level

intermediate

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

4

Recommendation years in dataset

2019–2021

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• As an aside, when you're reading the article and you stumble across the link to a description of how lift works, do yourself a favor and skip it. Instead, check out [VIDEO] . Almost no matter how sophisticated or simple your theory of lift is, …

• Doug McLean (Boeing Technical Fellow) has a quite decent talk about the question of intuitive explanations for aerodynamic lift: [VIDEO] Also Philippe Spalart's quote is right on the money: "It's easy to explain how a rocket works, but explaining how a wing works takes a …

• Yeah, the usual explanation of "air goes faster over the top because they have to meet at the end" is BS. Especially the 2nd part. A video about the subject [VIDEO] But the explanation I can come up with is: lift is a force due …