# No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ed Regis]] - Full Title: No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air - Category: #articles - URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-can-explain-why-planes-stay-in-the-air/ ## Highlights - Stated simply, Bernoulli’s law says that the pressure of a fluid decreases as its velocity increases, and vice versa ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgknvj10917yp6z882fcv416)) - Bernoulli’s theorem attempts to explain lift as a consequence of the curved upper surface of an airfoil, the technical name for an airplane wing. Because of this curvature, the idea goes, air traveling across the top of the wing moves faster than the air moving along the wing’s bottom surface, which is flat. Bernoulli’s theorem says that the increased speed atop the wing is associated with a region of lower pressure there, which is lift. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgknx3gkmn3dkjy5r6zrrq1v)) - lift. Although it is a fact of experience that air moves faster across a curved surface, Bernoulli’s theorem alone does not explain why this is so. In other words, the theorem does not say how the higher velocity above the wing came about to begin with ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgknxrmjn9hcjg3846e11841))