These are visible from a passenger's seat next to the wing on humid days, cold, moist mornings or flying through mist. Energy is lost in the process of making lift because of the airflow around the wingtips. A wingtip vortex generates a lot of drag. If the lift is spread out over a longer wingspan, the effects of the wingtip vortex are not as great. Engineers have found that designing wings with greater aspect ratio lessens that drag.
Aspect ratio is a comparison between the length and width of a wing.
Let's do the math. We first measure the wing's length and width. The greater the number for aspect ratio, the less the wingtip drag. Let's look at an example. Now figure the aspect ratio for each wing.