Can you see the 4 forces in action here?Īll kites will always have some drag, and some kites are not able to fly without some extra drag being exerted on them. Very simply put, when you run forwards, you feel air resistance, which is also known as drag. Drag is caused by the difference in air pressure between the front and back of the kite and the friction of the air moving over the surface of the kite. The next question is then what stops a kite from flying straight over your head and away from you? This is known as drag. This creates wind for the kite and is a common way to launch kites. If there was no wind, you would have to run while holding the kite string attached to the kite. We hold a kite in place via a piece of string. Instead, kites rely on being held in place in the air as wind moves around it. Kites do not have engines, and thus cannot produce their own thrust.

Another good example of thrust is how birds move forward through the air by flapping their wings. Thrust is most commonly seen when aircraft power up their engines to push air towards the back of the plane at high speeds to move the aircraft forward. Thrust is used to describe how strongly an engine pushes. Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton’s third law, When a body pushes in one direction, there is thrust (force) just as large in the opposite direction. Lift opposes gravity, and is usually artificially created to overcome the forces of Nature. In order for all this to happen, air needs to be constantly moving over the kite – this moving air is known as wind. The greater the difference between the low pressure and high pressure above and below the kite respectively, the greater the amount of lift produced. Lift conventionally acts in an upward direction in order to counter the force of gravity. This creates lift to keep the kite afloat in the wind. Using a kite as an example: as the air pressure above the kite becomes lower, the air pressure below the kite pushes the kite up in order to equalize the pressures above and below the kite. Aerodynamic objects such as cars, aircraft, and kites are shaped so that air slows down when travelling under its lower surface – in turn increasing pressure underneath the object – and air will speed up when it is travelling over the upper surface of the object, decreasing the pressure on the upper surface. The faster air moves, the lower the pressure becomes. Daniel Bernoulli, an 18th-century Swiss mathematician, is credited with the discovery that the pressure of air becomes lower when it is moving.

Lift is produced by air moving over the top of the kite at a faster speed than the air that is moving over the bottom of the kite. In other words, lift is the force that is pushing the kite up and away from the ground. Lift is the force that stops kites from getting pulled down to the ground when they are flying in the air. It shows how gravity is constantly trying to pull your kite down to the ground. In the above diagram, weight is the force that gravity exerts upon a body or item. It is an invisible force and keeps you on the ground. In this case, gravity between our kite and the Earth causes it to fall to the ground, just as you would when you jump up and land on your feet. The force of gravity keeps all of the planets in orbit around the sun.

It is the force by which a planet or other body draws objects toward its center. Gravity is a force of attraction that exists between any 2 items.

Flow tail delta kite