It was simply that by 1930's aeronautical engineering calculations the lift/drag ratio of a bumblebee was far too high. With a bit more knowledge it was understood that the estimated drag was too high. No one realized that the fuzzies reduced drag that much back then. The powder on a butterfly's wing serves the same purpose. So why do we not have fuzzy airplanes? We tend to like to fly a lot faster than bumblebees do, and the effect becomes moot at those speeds.
-- graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" ----------------------------------- Mark Roberts wrote: > Ivan Shukster wrote: > >> I remember reading that the bubble bee example was done at a party on a >> napkin and the next day the person who showed that bees cannot fly came back >> and said that he forgot to include something in the calculation. > > The bumblebee flight issue is really not that anyone ever proved that > they *can't* fly, just that they can't determine the exact mechanism > of *how* they fly: Bees not only move their wings to fly, they > constantly change the angle of attack of the wing and, most > problematic, the *shape* of the wing. The number of possible > permutations of all these variables just makes it impossible for even > the most powerful supercomputer to work with all the data. > > As the story passed from one person to another it morphed into the > pithy but inaccurate notion that scientists have "proven" that > bumblebees can't fly. > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
