Nectar-drinking species of hummingbirds and bats are both excellent at hovering – one of the toughest aerodynamic feats – but they each have their own ways of doing it. Hummingbirds Keep reading
Tag: flapping
Galapagos Week: Sea Turtles
It’s easy to imagine sea turtles as slow and awkward given our familiarity with their terrestrial cousins, tortoises, but this could hardly be further from the truth. There are currently Keep reading
Schooling in Soap Films
In sports, flocks of birds, and schools of fish, we’re accustomed to thinking that the followers get an aerodynamic or hydrodynamic advantage over the leaders, but this may not always Keep reading
The Japanese Pufferfish
[original media no longer available] If you’ve ever dived or snorkeled over a sandy lake or ocean bottom, you’ve probably seen some neat patterns there. But it’s hard to compete Keep reading
Inside a Popping Bubble
Popping a soap bubble is more complicated than what the eye can see. In high-speed video, we find that the action is very directional, with the soap bubble film pulling Keep reading
Hiding in the Sand
Flounders, stingrays, and other flat, bottom-dwelling fish often hide under sand for protection. These fish move by oscillating their fins or the edge of their bodies. They use a similar Keep reading
Soap Film Butterfly
Originally posted: 14 Jan 2011 This gorgeous butterfly-like double spiral roll takes place on a horizontal soap film. The foil (seen top center) inserted in the film flaps back and forth. Keep reading
Flapping Foil Wake
This gorgeous visualization shows the flow behind a flapping foil. Flow in the water tunnel is from right to left, with dye introduced to show streamlines. A flapping foil is Keep reading
Imitating Flapping Flight
Flapping flight, despite being utilized by creatures of many sizes in nature, remains remarkably difficult to engineer. In this experiment, a simple rectangular wing is flapped up and down sinusoidally. Keep reading
Flapping Flags
The flapping of flexible objects like flags have long fascinated mankind. The figure above from Shelley and Zhang 2011 shows several possible flapping states. In (a) a thread immersed in Keep reading