Daily Archives: October 18, 2011

Winglets: The anti-vortex device

In class we covered how vortices are generated at the tips of wings. We learned that this is due to high pressure air from under the wing spilling over the wing tip and moving into the area of low pressure above the wing. This causes a large “tornado” of air to form off of the […]

Golden eagle droppings

We’ve all seen Eagle’s hunt, but the Golden eagle has a special hunting tactic. It uses this thing called gravity to create dinner out of some unlikely, and unlucky prey. The Golden Eagle has been known to take turtles and baby goats and drop them from heights in order to instantly kill them. By time […]

Evolution of Mammalian Flight

As previously stated, bats are the only mammals truly capable of flight. But why is this? Of all the species of mammals, why is it that only the Order Chiroptera can achieve flight? And how did such an extraordinary adaptation come to be? Well…the answer is…we really are not sure. But there is evidence that […]

Vortices and the Amazing Flying V

We have learned that vortices can have devastating effects when an airplane flies through the wash of another airplane. The wings cause powerful spirals of air moving clockwise off the left wing and counterclockwise coming off the right wing. This holds for birds flying as well. The same vortex patterns emerge, albeit slightly different since […]

The Wright Flyer’s warping wings

It is well known that the first powered and piloted flight of an aircraft was performed by two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright. These two brothers designed a glider-based aircraft that was powered by a 4-stroke engine. The design also had a 32-foot wingspan and weighed about 700 pounds. This aircraft came to be known […]