How Does A Wing Actually Work?
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users link it when explaining lift and why the popular Bernoulli-only story is misleading, often as a quick visual companion to Newton's third law arguments.
Recommended by 2 people across 3 different months, 2013 to 2021.
What it is
A short Veritasium explainer by Derek Muller on how aircraft wings generate lift, aimed at correcting common misunderstandings of the topic. It was made as a lead-in to an interview with an Olympic sailor about the physics of sailing.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Lift (force).
What people said
Recommends T. Kiley · 2014-07 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Problem understanding basic sail mechanics”
@CarlWitthoft So I've watched this video [this video] and I can see how that generates lift on a plane, but when I do the vectors for the sail, I get a vector that pushes (broadly) in the direction of the wind. I'll update the question with a diagram but I don't see how it can push the boat into the wind.
Recommends RC_23 · 2021-09 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Newtonian mechanics vs. Pressure in Flight”
The first one is correct. The second one (the way the diagram says it anyway) is incorrect and a very common misconception, or at best misleading and rather thin. In my mind, it's better to say there exist higher and lower pressure regions BECAUSE of the force of the wings on the air. They are two sides of the same coin, but the wing is causing that pressure condition, not taking advantage of an existing condition. Recommend watching this short treatment [this video]
Recommends RC_23 · 2021-10 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “If Bernoulli's Principle can only be applied to a streamline, how does it justify the pressure difference that causes lift?”
It really doesn't, or at least it is widely misunderstood, to the point where I would almost call it a misconception to say a wing flies because of Bernoulli. It's true that Bernoulli's principle applies to fluid streamlines above and below the wing, as it does to any incompressible flow. But the main reason lift occurs is much simpler: an angled surface (red) moves forward and pushes incoming the air down, which by Newton's 3rd Law pushes the wing up. That's it. The air changes direction (blue vectors). If you subtract the blue vectors (and then take the negative) you get the green vector, which is imparted to the wing. This video explains it better than I could in a post [this video]
Cites Meow · 2013-01 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “How much effect does the Bernoulli effect have on lift?”
I understand that the Bernoulli effect is a flawed explanation for the cause of lift, and does not cause much at all, but how much ? Is there any experimental data on the force caused by the Bernoulli effect? Maybe implicitly through data of the pressure difference between the top and underside of an aeroplane's wings. After that, I assume I could (crudely approximating the pressure to be acting perpendicularly to the flight direction) use $\Delta P A$ to work out the net force on the plane. Perhaps there is another way to quantitatively analyse the extent to which the Bernoulli effect causes lift. Edit: see this [this video] short cartoon (content similar to Mike Dunlavey's answer).