I felt fully qualified to take on the simple-sounding request when my son's teacher asked, "Could you come talk to my fifth-grade class about how to fly an airplane?" I hold both advanced and instrument ground instructor certificates, so without fully considering the consequences, I said, "Sure thing, I'd be happy to." But as I sat down late that night to draw up the lesson plan-fortified with a glass of red wine and prepared with blank pad of paper-Ⅰ realized just how challenging my task was going to be. After all, how do you fly an airplane? Well, to know how to fly an airplane, you first need to know a few things about how airplanes work. And to know a few things about how airplanes work, you need some basic understanding of aerodynamics. And to have some basic understanding of aerodynamics, you need some fundamental physics under your belt. And on it goes.
展开▼
