Why don't jumbo jets flap their wings? : flying animals, flying machines, and how they are different / David E. Alexander.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alexander, David E., 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aeronautics--Popular works.

Aeronautics.

Animal flight--Popular works.

Animal flight.

Flying-machines--Popular works.

Flying-machines.

Airplanes--Popular works.

Airplanes.

Birds--Flight--Popular works.

Birds.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (296 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What do a bumble bee and a 747 jet have in common? It’s not a trick question. The fact is they have quite a lot in common. They both have wings. They both fly. And they’re both ideally suited to it. They just do it differently. Why Don’t Jumbo Jets Flap Their Wings? offers a fascinating explanation of how nature and human engineers each arrived at powered flight. What emerges is a highly readable account of two very different approaches to solving the same fundamental problems of moving through the air, including lift, thrust, turning, and landing. The book traces the slow and deliberate evolutionary process of animal flight—in birds, bats, and insects—over millions of years and compares it to the directed efforts of human beings to create the aircraft over the course of a single century. Among the many questions the book answers: Why are wings necessary for flight? How do different wings fly differently? When did flight evolve in animals? What vision, knowledge, and technology was needed before humans could learn to fly? Why are animals and aircrafts perfectly suited to the kind of flying they do? David E. Alexander first describes the basic properties of wings before launching into the diverse challenges of flight and the concepts of flight aerodynamics and control to present an integrated view that shows both why birds have historically had little influence on aeronautical engineering and exciting new areas of technology where engineers are successfully borrowing ideas from animals.

Contents:

Flying animals and flying machines : birds of a feather?

Hey buddy, need a lift?

Power : the primary push

To turn or not to turn

A tail of two tails

Flight instruments

Dispensing with power : soaring

Straight up : vertical take-offs and hovering

Stoop of the falcon : predation and aerial combat

Biology meets technology head-on : ornithopters and human-powered flight.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-267) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)

ISBN:

0-8135-4861-6

OCLC:

593315853