Honeybees have superpowers when it comes to their aerodynamics and impressive pollen-carrying, but their talents don’t end in the air. A new study confirms that honeybees can surf. Wet bees Keep reading
Tag: thrust
Flying on Flexible Wings
Bats are incredible and rather unique among today’s fliers. Like birds, they flap to produce their lift and thrust, but where birds have relatively stiff wings, a bat’s wings are Keep reading
Water Skiing Beetles
Waterlily beetles employ an unusual method of getting around: they skim across the water surface. The beetles are mostly covered in tiny hairs that help make their body hydrophobic (water-repellent) Keep reading
Turbojet Engines
[original media no longer available] GE has a great new video with a straightforward explanation of the turbojet and the turbofan engines. The simplest description of the engines–suck, squeeze, bang, Keep reading
Maze-Solving Droplets
The Leidenfrost effect occurs when liquids come in contact with a substrate much, much hotter than their boiling temperature. Rather than immediately boiling away, a thin layer of the liquid Keep reading
Ferrofluid Thrusters
Ferrofluids–magnetically-sensitive fluids made up of a carrier liquid and ferrous nanoparticles–may soon have a new application as a miniature thruster on nanosatellites. Microspray thrusters use tiny hollow needles to electrically Keep reading
Falcon vs. Raven
Earth Unplugged has posted some great high-speed footage of a peregrine falcon and a raven in flight. Notice how both birds draw their wings inward and back on the upstroke. 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
Jet-Based Control
Researchers have flown the first aircraft designed to maneuver without conventional control surfaces like ailerons and flaps. Instead of changing the wing geometry to alter the lift on different parts Keep reading
Human-Powered Ornithopter
A team at the University of Toronto has flown the world’s first human-powered ornithopter, an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings like a bird. The concept dates back all Keep reading