The Story of Airplane Wings

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to explain how wings work and how they were invented. We use the lens of history, looking at the individual people who wanted to fly, the lens of technology, looking at the key inventions leading up to modern airplanes, and the lens of physics, looking at the equations of airflow that made it all possible. Finally, we derive our own wing from scratch. We do this by simulating a wind tunnel, placing a rectangular occlusion in it, and then using gradient ascent to turn it into a wing.