Aerodynamic Forces Quotes

We returned home, after these experiments, with the conviction that sailing flight was not the exclusive prerogative of birds.

Helicopters don't fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them.

Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings.

All flight is based upon producing air pressure, all flight energy consists in overcoming air pressure.

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.

The jolt that Tony Blair received 35,000ft above the Pacific Ocean was not normal turbulence.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

To speak of this subject you must... explain the nature of the resistance of the air, in the second the anatomy of the bird and its wings, in the third the method of working the wings in their various movements, in the fourth the power of the wings and the tail when the wings are not being moved and when the wind is favourable to serve as guide in various movements.

To jump and break the sound barrier will not be a mere record breaking experience or another extreme event that ends once the mission is accomplished.

We haven't sat down with Scott and Caroline and said, Now you realize that there's X amount of pounds of thrust. And this can happen and that can happen.

Turbulence.” This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You'll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, “Folks, we're encountering a little turbulence.” Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean water-buffalo organs off the windshield.

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

That spin became so violent, it was hard to know how to get out of it. I was able to get it under control and break the speed of sound...I could feel myself break the speed of sound. I could feel the air building up and then I hit it.

For many years in my laboratory and other laboratories around the world, we've been studying fly behaviors in little flight simulators. You can tether a fly to a little stick. You can measure the aerodynamic forces it's creating. You can let the fly play a little video game by letting it fly around in a visual display.

Turbulence, like many forms of trouble, cannot always be seen. We bounce so hard my arms sail helplessly above my head. In evolution, wing bones became arms and hands; perhaps I'm de-evolving.