I've recently been reading about what really causes lift on an airfoil and the article linked mentions that even a symmetric airfoil or even a flat plate generates lift as long as the angle of attack is non-zero.
It explains the pressure differential between the top of the airfoil and the bottom of the airfoil being caused by the fact that the air needs to bend around the airfoil and for this bending there must be a centripetal force perpendicular to the direction of movement. And the only thing which can cause this centripetal force to create the turning effect is a pressure differential, hence there must be lower pressure on the top of the airfoil and higher pressure underneath it (for a positive angle of attack), which generates the lift.
Putting it all together the article explains the pressure differential (which implies a net lifting force/faster air speed on top of the airfoil) through this picture:
So far so good and I understand what is happening. It then extends this situation to a flat plate which is where I start getting confused.
In this diagram it looks like the flow lines almost "want" to go above the top of the plate - see the flow line just above the red arrow, were it to continue straight it would hit the bottom of the plate a fair distance from the edge, and were I to draw this line I would draw it as going under the plate, however the actual flow line curves very strongly to go ove the top of the plate.
Also in the diagram it looks like the flow very strongly curves around the plate so that even if you are close to the right edge just above the plate there will still be flow going past you. This also seems slightly weird to me because if you rotate everything 90 degrees clockwise the situation is like that of you standing just behind a tall wall with wind flowing from the other side towards you at an angle. In such a case I'd expect to not feel any wind rushing past me if I'm close enough to the wall (just like how skyscrapers block wind and I have empirical experience of this), however according to the diagram above I should feel it.
Were I asked to draw the flow I'd have instead done something like this:
However this diagram suggests that the net lift force should be downwards, which I know to be false because if you put you hand out of a moving car's window you feel an upwards force as expected by the previous diagram. So my question is: where is my intuition going wrong here, and what's the intuition behind why the flow curves so sharply to go above the plate in this case, and why does it keep turning after it crosses the plate until it's nearly paralell to the plate instead of just going on in a straight line once it gets past the plate?
