Principles of Flight - Solids

Air - page 2

The next strange question we must ask is

"How is a gas different than a liquid or a solid?"

Obviously, it is different, but how do we describe that difference? How de we measure it? And how does it impact the design of airplanes?

Let's talk about solids first. In solid matter the molecules are packed together very tightly so that while you can sometimes bend them or squish them flat it is very hard to make them take up less space by sqeezing them. Because of this, we say that solids are incompressible. In addition, the closely packed molecules of a solid cling to each other very tightly. This makes it so that they can't slide past each other and is why solids don't flow like liquids but instead hold their shape.

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Last modified: Tue May 6 15:43:35 PDT 1997