>Air over the top has to travel farther in the same amount of time
There is no requirement for air to travel any where. Let alone in any amount of time. So this part of the AI's response is completely wrong. "Same amount of time" as what? Air going underneath the wing? With an angle of attack the air under the wing is being deflected down, not magically meeting up with the air above the wing.
But this just sounds like a simplified layman explanation, the same way most of the ways we talk about electricity are completely wrong in terms of how electricity actually works.
If you look at airflow over an asymmetric airfoil [1], the air does move faster over the top. Sure, it doesn't arrive "at the same time" (it goes much faster than that) or fully describe why these effects are happening, but that's why it's a simplification for lay people. Wikipedia says [2]:
> Although the two simple Bernoulli-based explanations above are incorrect, there is nothing incorrect about Bernoulli's principle or the fact that the air goes faster on the top of the wing, and Bernoulli's principle can be used correctly as part of a more complicated explanation of lift.
But from what I can tell, the root of the answer is right. The shape of a wing causes pressure zones to form above and below the wing, generating extra lift (on top of deflection). From NASA's page [3]:
> {The upper flow is faster and from Bernoulli's equation the pressure is lower. The difference in pressure across the airfoil produces the lift.} As we have seen in Experiment #1, this part of the theory is correct. In fact, this theory is very appealing because many parts of the theory are correct.
That isn't to defend the AI response, it should know better given how many resources there are on this answer being misleading.
And so I don't leave without a satisfying conclusion, the better layman explanation should be (paraphrasing from the Smithsonian page [4]):
> The shape of the wing pushes air up, creating a leading edge with narrow flow. This small high pressure region is followed by the decline to the wider-flow trailing edge, which creates a low pressure region that sucks the air on the leading edge backward. In the process, the air above the wing rapidly accelerates and the air flowing above the top of the wing as a whole forms of a lower pressure region than the air below. Thus, lift advantage even when horizontal.
Someone please correct that if I've said something wrong.
Shame the person supposedly with a PHD on this didn't explain it at all.
The bottom line is that a curved airfoil will not generate any more lift than a non-curved airfoil (pre-stall) that has its trailing edge at the same angle.
The function of the curvature is to improve the wing's ability to avoid stall at a high angle of attack.
According to NASA, the Air and Space Museum, and Wikipedia: you are wrong. Nor does what you're a saying making any sense to anyone who has seen an airplane fly straight.
Symmetric airfoils do not generate lift without a positive angle of attack. Cambered airfoils do, precisely because the camber itself creates lift via Bernoulli.
I stated "has its trailing edge at the same angle", not "is at the same angle of attack". Angle of attack is defined by the angle of the chord line, not the angle of the trailing edge. Cambered airfoils have their trailing edges at higher angles than the angle of attack.
Again, not an expert, but how does that jive with the existence of reflex cambered airfoils? Positive lift at zero AoA with a negative trailing edge AoA.
And that seems to directly conflict with the models shown by the resources above? They state that cambered wings do have increased airspeed above the wing, which generates lift via pressure differential (thus why the myth is so sticky).
Reflex cambered airfoils generate lift because most of the wing is still pointed downwards.
The crucial thing you need to explain is this: why doesn't extending leading edge droop flaps increase the lift at a pre-stall angle of attack? (See Figure 13 from this NASA study for example: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19800004771)
There is no requirement for air to travel any where. Let alone in any amount of time. So this part of the AI's response is completely wrong. "Same amount of time" as what? Air going underneath the wing? With an angle of attack the air under the wing is being deflected down, not magically meeting up with the air above the wing.