Impinging jets are central to a large amount of industrial processes and applications, and as such have been investigated extensively. Despite this fact, review of the literature shows that a comprehensive description for the flow and heat transfer of the basic underlying laminar single-jet case has not been given. Thereby the present study attempts to collect the understanding gained by previous studies, together with that obtained in recent studies by the authors, in a logical manner (following the flow), in order to formulate such a description. While not necessarily complete, more complex aspects such as turbulence, confinement and dissipation are not addressed, the present study takes a major step towards a unified description of this fundamental flow-configuration.