Tagged: auto-rotation

Spinning and gliding seeds

A previous post by a student in last quarter’s class briefly discusses the autorotation abilities of the maple samara, then talked about a monocopter based on the samara’s design. The maple samara is certainly fascinating – but it is not the only seed with interesting aerodynamic properties. In fact, it is described as “crude” in […]

Small Seeds Inspire Big Ideas

Many of us can remember as a child being fascinated by maple seeds, with their single wing, spinning gracefully to the ground. As it turns out, scientists also have been amazed by this process. So much so that since the 1950s, engineers have been trying to replicate the flight of these seeds. Maple seeds, a […]