Flight
- See also Insect flight
Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly.
Read more about this topic: Butterfly
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“No Ravens wing can stretch the flight so far
As the torn bandrols of Napoleons war.
Choose then your climate, fix your best abode,
Hell make you deserts and hell bring you blood.
How could you fear a dearth? have not mankind,
Tho slain by millions, millions left behind?
Has not conscription still the power to weild
Her annual faulchion oer the human field?
A faithful harvester!”
—Joel Barlow (17541812)
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight theyll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things ...”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)