The tips of wings are airplanes that are vertical?

Question

I see on commercials for air carriers that sometimes the tips of the plane's wing are vertical vs horizontal. What does this mean?

Hopefully I'm explaining this right, but some planes the tips are not vertical and some planes the tips of the wings are pointing up.

Answer 1

These 'vertical wing' are called winglets. They are desinded to cut down on drag. The wing produce whats called wing tip vortices that create alot of wake tunrbulence hense making alot of drag on the Aircraft. This design increases the speed of the aircraft and in turn reduces drag. Many new model aiplanes are made with this design, mostly found on the 'Heavies' (aircraft over 250,000 lbs).

Answer 2

They are winglets. Apparently it makes the plane more fuel efficient and it gets a little faster speed.

Answer 3

The answers above are essentially correct in that Winglets increase lift buy reducing wingtip vortex, thereby reducing drag.  However, they can also be used on light aircraft.  

What I find fascinating, and nobody mentioned, is that they were patented in 1897!!!  Six years before the first controlled flight!!!

Try this site for some good illustrations of the affect, http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-fa...

Cheers!!!

Answer 4

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winglets

The vertical winglets provide lift using less horizontal space than a normal wing-tip.

Answer 5

They increase the effective span without increasing the actual span.  Don't worry, it's not that important.  The real reason is that they look cool.

Answer 6

The vertical part of the wing on the end of it are called winglets.

They are used to reduce induced drag.  You see them a lot on some of the newer 737's.  Southwest has found such a drastic fuel reduction with them that they are going to put them on all of their aircraft.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Answer 7

the winglets give lift w/o giving as much drag as horizontal ones= saving fuel