Gliding flight is heavier-than-air flight without the use of thrust. It is employed by gliding animals and by aircraft such as gliders. The most common human application of gliding flight is in sport and recreation using aircraft designed for this purpose. However almost all powered aircraft are capable of gliding without engine power. As with sustained flight, gliding generally requires the application of an airfoil, such as the wings on aircraft or birds, or the gliding membrane on gliding possum. However, gliding can be achieved with a flat (uncambered) wing as with a simple paper plane, or even with card-throwing. The term volplaning has been used for this mode of flight.
Read more about Gliding Flight: Forces, Lift To Drag Ratio, Drag, Glide Ratio, Examples, Importance of The Glide Ratio in Gliding Flight, Soaring
Famous quotes containing the words gliding and/or flight:
“How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“One man’s observation is another man’s closed book or flight of fancy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)