Hi, and welcome to BrainBox. I hope that you've had a go at making some of our paper planes - they're great fun!

Here we're going to be looking at how real planes fly. Many of us have been on a plane, and some people use them quite regularly. How many of you use a plane to go on your holidays every year? We are so used to planes that we take them for granted. People who fly very often don't think any more of going to an airport and getting on a plane than they do of getting on a bus!

Planes aren't that simple, though. When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that something so big and so heavy can lift itself off the ground and fly for thousands of kilometres. It's even more amazing that you can sit on a plane, have a cup of tea or watch a film as it hurtles through the air at very fast speeds!

A lot of hard work and some very clever design and technology goes into flying planes. To find out more, read on…