So, I tried reading the wikipedia article covering the subject, but nothing made sense; so if y’all could explain the critical attack and things like that as well, it would be great!!
In: Physics
An aircraft needs to travel at a certain speed or above (that means air flows over its wings at a certain speed). This air travelling *over* the wings causes something called “lift”. Lift is the upward force which causes the aircraft to stay in the air. Lift can only happen when the air travels over the wings at or above this speed. Hence why aircraft need to reach this speed when on a runway. If an aircraft drops below this speed when in the air, the amount of air travelling over the wings drops, meaning the lift is no longer sufficient to keep the aircraft in the air. This is what is called a stall. The cause of the drop in speed can either be too little power (engine problem), or the aircraft is pitched too high (pointing upwards too steep).
Imagine a paper airplane – you must throw it forward at a certain speed for it to keep airborne, otherwise it will fall out of the sky. It is a similar concept (although it is the shape of the wing on the real aircraft which is key to generating lift), but it should help you to imagine.
Now for critical angle of attack… imagine the same paper airplane, if you throw it angled towards the ceiling, it would immediately fall from the sky regardless of how fast you’d thrown it. This is because it’s angle is above it’s critical angle.
All of the above is filled with very complicated mathematics, but I’ve tried to ELI5, hope it helps.
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