The Bernoulli Equation
In the US, many students' first introduction to aerodynamic principles happens in basic physics or natural sciences coursework with a lesson on the "Bernoulli effect." Unfortunately, for a lot of people this is also the end of their education in aerodynamics, leading to a lot of incorrect understanding, weird theories, and gross oversimplification—like the incorrect idea that a fully streamlined body with no flow separation will have no pressure drag ( it still does ). You probably recall the gist of it: as the velocity of a stream of air increases, its static pressure is reduced. This qualitative relationship is always true of low speed flows with no energy addition, since (total) pressure is a measure of the (total) energy in a volume of air and, because energy cannot be created or destroyed spontaneously, when more of that energy is used in the kinetic energy of the flow there must be less internal energy (static pressure) available. This is one explanation of how ...