Air Forces

Aims

Pupils should gain an understanding of:

• Unbalanced forces change the speed and/or the direction of a moving object; balanced forces produce no change in the movement of an object;
• The ways in which frictional forces, including air resistance, affect motion;
• The fact that an unbalanced force can speed things up or slow them down;
• The idea that as you travel faster, friction and air resistance increase;
• The forces acting on a skydiver falling at constant speed must be balanced;
• The fact that it is the shape of a wing which causes the upward force called lift.