An excellent way for students to gain a feel for aerodynamic forces is to fly a kite .
Kites can fly because of the forces acting on the parts of the kite.
Though kites come in many shapes and sizes, the forces which act on a kite are the same for all kites and are shown on this slide. You can compare these forces to the forces acting on an airliner in flight and you will find that, with the exception of thrust, they are exactly the same. The similarity in forces allowed the Wright brothers to test some of their theories of flight by using a kite in 1900. The slide shows a free body diagram of the kite. In a free body diagram, we draw a single object and all of the forces which act on that object.