Donald Trump says that “no one knows what magnets are” during a strange Oval Office press conference. During the swearing in of a new ambassador to India on Monday (10 November), the President launched into a rant about China, whilst discussing their recent agreement to start easing rare earth export rules. “China was going to hit us with rare-earth. Now, everybody says, ‘Oh, what does that mean?’ Magnets. If China refused to give magnets, because they have a monopoly on magnets… there wouldn’t be a car made in the entire world.” He then claimed that “nobody knows what magnets are”, before going on to praise the “great deal” the two nations made in October. Whilst the talks did not end in a formal agreement, Mr Trump agreed to reduce tariffs on some Chinese goods entering the US, whilst Beijing agreed to suspend export control measures it had placed on rare earths.
No, the science and engineering is well understood and can be calculated entirely in models that use this knowledge to precisely predict thinks like lift and drag. There is no guess work or mystery about it.
However the common “facts” that we are often taught as explanation to children and the layperson for lift are wrong and/or incomplete. The Equal Transit Theory, i.e. the idea that when a wing splits the air, the air above and below must meet at the same time on the back of the wing causing the air on top to have to move faster due to the greater distance to travel, is just not true.
However that lower pressure above the wing that doesnt actually result from the Equal Transit Theory, that part is true. It is caused by the deflection of air on the underside of the wing causing the higher pressure underneath and lower pressure over the top. Lower pressure over the wing does in fact cause a component of lift due to Bernoulli’s Principle. But it is also not the entirety of the source of lift. Other components include the Coanda Effect from the curvature of the wing redirecting air downward, as well as the just simple propulsion caused by the propeller(s)or jet(s) and downward deflection of air hitting the underside of the wing, which is basic Newtonian motion (3rd law).