Science: Slowdown for Jets

When an airplane flies, it gets its lift because air traveling over the curved top surface of its wing must go faster, thus exerting less pressure, than air moving across the bottom surface. The more speed, the greater difference in pressure, and the greater the lift. But when flying speed is lost, the pressure difference diminishes, lift-destroying eddies build up over the wing, and the plane stalls.

Last week Lockheed Aircraft Corp. reported a new device that enables aircraft to fly at lower speeds without stalling. Now being built into a mass-produced Navy jet...

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