Guilt-free air travel is a beautiful dream, but there’s simply no way to get enough solar energy to keep a cabin full of people in the air.
Today in science from Wired, at a recent rally, Donald Trump stated that electric planes could be a bad idea because you couldn't fly if it was cloudy.
I guess electric equates to solar energy in the former president's mind, which you know is actually great, just not so much for air travel.
Oh, solar planes have been around for a while, but they're probably not what Trump had in mind.
Theyre an ultralight aircraft, usually unmanned and carrying a single skinny pilot.
Its very unlikely that you will ever be a passenger on a solar powered plane that is delayed by clouds.
How can I be so sure?
Because physics.
Lets see why.
The next time youre riding in a car, stick your hand out the window flat with your palm down.
You should feel a backward pushing force from the interaction with the air.
Now tilt your hand slightly up.
Don't resist, just let the air push your hand up.
It feels like it wants to fly away, right?
Your hand is just like a plane wing.
What's really happening here?
Let's focus on one molecule of air interacting with your hand.
The molecule starts at rest.
Its velocity, or v, is zero.
Then your moving handwriting collides with air molecules and pushes it so that it moves downward and forward.
That molecule of air changed velocity, which means it accelerated.