(Question type: Task 4)
You will now listen to part of a lecture. You will then be asked a question about it. After you hear the question, you will have 20 seconds to prepare your response and 60 seconds to speak.
Using points and examples from the lecture, summarize the two explanations of how planes are able to fly.
Preparation time: 20 seconds
Response time: 60 seconds
This is a technical lecture, but the structure of it is straightforward. The professor starts by saying he’ll talk about a “couple of ways” we can explain how planes fly. After that, you should be ready to takes notes on two different parts of the lecture—the two different explanations. Then when you summarize, break it into parts and deal with the two different explanations separately. If you understood one better than the other, then spend more time on that one, but don’t get stuck summarizing only one of the two. For full points, you need to talk through both explanations from the professor.
Planes fly?
The professor describes a couple of different…well, sort of different explanations for how airplanes stay in the air. They both hinge on air pushing the plane up, in a way. But the first explanation he details is that the air going under a wing…it gets pushed down by the slant, and in response, it has to push back up, lifting the plane. The second one is more complicated. It’s based on some law of how fluids work…a law that says slower moving air has higher pressure, and vice versa. The wing shape makes the air above it move faster, so that air has lower pressure, and that means there’s more pressure…uhh…higher pressure under the wing, again, pushing upward.