I see it as a small flap that opens up and it speeds up the cars by a large margin. How does something so small like a flap provide that much of a boost?
In: Engineering
Imagine holding out a board or sheet of metal the size of that flap, outside of a moving car, flat side into the wind. At 50kph/30mph, it won’t be too bad; you’ll be able to hang on to it. At 100kph/60mph, it will be 4x as difficult; probably getting to the point where you aren’t going to be able to hold it anymore.
At 300kph/180mph, the force on that board is experiencing 36x as much force as it did at 50kph/30mph. That is a lot of force from drag. If you then turn the sheet so that the narrow edge is in the wind, you’ll still have a lot of drag, but it’ll be far less than it was.
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