The Simple Science of Flight

Author: Hendrik Tennekes
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262700658
Category : Aerodynamics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
From the smallest gnat to the largest aircraft, all things that fly obey the same aerodynamic principles. The Simple Science of Flight offers a leisurely introduction to the mechanics of flight and, beyond that, to the scientific attitude that finds wonder in simple calculations, forging connections between, say, the energy efficiency of a peanut butter sandwich that fuels your body and that of the kerosene that fuels a jumbo jet. It is the product of a lifetime of watching and investigating the way flight happens. He covers paper airplanes, kites, gliders, and human-powered flying machines as well as birds and insects, explaining difficult concepts like lift, drag, wing loading, and cruising speed through many fascinating comparisons, anecdotes, and examples. Equations, often the best shorthand to explain and connect phenomena, are integrated seamlessly into the flow of the text in such a way that even math-phobic readers should not be put off. Tennekes begins with a simple comparison of the relative fuel consumption of hummingbirds, cars, and airplanes, then turns to the relations between an airplane's weight, its wing area, and its cruising speed. After showing that it is possible to collect data on all flying creatures and flying machines in a single "Great Flight Diagram", he looks at energetics through the considerable efforts of a little 35-gram bird in a wind tunnel. There are stories on the effects of headwinds, tailwinds, and weather conditions on both birds and planes, on the elegance of the mechanics that makes flight possible, and on the aerodynamics of sophisticated flying toys.

Inflight Science

Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848312806
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
The perfect companion to any flight - a guide to the science on view from your window seat. There are few times when science is so immediate as when you're in a plane. Your life is in the hands of the scientists and engineers who enable tons of metal and plastic to hurtle through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. Inflight Science shows how you stay alive up there - but that's only the beginning. Brian Clegg explains the ever changing view, whether it's crop circles or clouds, mountains or river deltas, and describes simple experiments to show how a wing provides lift, or what happens if you try to open a door in midair (don't!). On a plane you'll experience the impact of relativity, the power of natural radiation and the effect of altitude on the boiling point of tea. Among the many things you'll learn is why the sky is blue, the cause of thunderstorms and the impact of volcanic ash in an enjoyable tour of mid-air science. Every moment of your journey is an opportunity to experience science in action: Inflight Science will be your guide.

Kids' Paper Airplane Book

Author: Ken Blackburn
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 9780761104780
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
Provides information on the principles of aerodynamics, suggestions for designing airplanes, and instructions for folding paper planes and doing stunts and playing games with them.

Fantastic Flight

Author: John M. Collins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781580085779
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Book Description
Provides instructions for creating twenty-five paper airplanes using single sheets of paper.

Introduction to Aircraft Flight Mechanics

Author: Thomas R. Yechout
Publisher: AIAA
ISBN: 9781600860782
Category : Aerodynamics
Languages : en
Pages : 666

Book Description
Based on a 15-year successful approach to teaching aircraft flight mechanics at the US Air Force Academy, this text explains the concepts and derivations of equations for aircraft flight mechanics. It covers aircraft performance, static stability, aircraft dynamics stability and feedback control.

EXPLORE FLIGHT!

Author: Anita Yasuda
Publisher: Nomad Press
ISBN: 1619301784
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
Who invented the airplane? When were airplanes invented? And why do planes have wings if the wings don’t flap? Kids can answer these questions and more by jumping into the cockpit and soaring into Explore Flight! With 25 Great Projects, where they’ll learn about the history of our human obsession to conquer the feat of flying. For kids ages 6-9, Explore Flight! With 25 Great Projects introduces them to the dreamers, inventors, aviation pioneers, and record breakers. They will read about the myths and legends of flying and about the wondrous flying machines of the past, present and future. They will learn that in the 15th century Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of airplanes, helicopters and other flying machines, and that the first passengers in a hot air balloon were a sheep, a rooster, and a duck. Along the way, they will develop a better understanding of the rich history of aviation, investigate what causes flight, and learn about the science of aerodynamics. Projects and experiments range from making a paper airplane to building an airfoil. All the projects in this book are easy to follow, require little adult supervision, and use commonly found household products, many from the recycling.

The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences

Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691120577
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
In this captivating yet troubling book, Ian Shapiro offers a searing indictment of many influential practices in the social sciences and humanities today. Perhaps best known for his critique of rational choice theory, Shapiro expands his purview here. In discipline after discipline, he argues, scholars have fallen prey to inward-looking myopia that results from--and perpetuates--a flight from reality. In the method-driven academic culture we inhabit, argues Shapiro, researchers too often make display and refinement of their techniques the principal scholarly activity. The result is that they lose sight of the objects of their study. Pet theories and methodological blinders lead unwelcome facts to be ignored, sometimes not even perceived. The targets of Shapiro's critique include the law and economics movement, overzealous formal and statistical modeling, various reductive theories of human behavior, misguided conceptual analysis in political theory, and the Cambridge school of intellectual history. As an alternative to all of these, Shapiro makes a compelling case for problem-driven social research, rooted in a realist philosophy of science and an antireductionist view of social explanation. In the lucid--if biting--prose for which Shapiro is renowned, he explains why this requires greater critical attention to how problems are specified than is usually undertaken. He illustrates what is at stake for the study of power, democracy, law, and ideology, as well as in normative debates over rights, justice, freedom, virtue, and community. Shapiro answers many critics of his views along the way, securing his position as one of the distinctive social and political theorists of our time.

Skyfaring

Author: Mark Vanhoenacker
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385351828
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed. The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine what we—both as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.

Taking Flight: The Story of the Wright Brothers

Author: Stephen Krensky
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780613355797
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The story of how a flying machine made by two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and how they managed to get it airborne, thus changing the course of history, is told using simple yet clear technical terms and realistic paintings. Full-color illustrations.

The Flight of the Silvers

Author: Daniel Price
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101620048
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 604

Book Description
For fans of Blake Crouch, the propulsive first book in the genre-bending Silvers trilogy, in which six ordinary people become extraordinary when they find themselves the sole survivors of an apocalypse that lands them on an Earth far different from our own—one on which they have X-Men-like powers to manipulate time. Without warning, the world comes to an end. The sky looms frigid white. The electric grid falters. Airplanes everywhere crash to the ground, and finally, the sky comes down in a crushing sheet of light, taking out everything and everyone with it—except for Hannah and Amanda Given. Saved from destruction by three fearsome and powerful beings who adorn them each with an irremovable silver bracelet, the Given sisters suddenly find themselves on a strange new Earth where restaurants move through the air like flying saucers and the fabric of time itself is manipulated by common household appliances. Upon arrival to this alternate America, Hannah and Amanda are taken to a science laboratory where they meet four other survivors from their world, all of whom wear matching silver bracelets—a mordant cartoonist, a shy teenage girl, a brilliant young Australian, and a troubled ex-prodigy. While being poked and prodded by scientists who may be friends or enemies, the group discovers that it’s not only their world that is different—they are different. Each has the power to manipulate time with their bare hands…a power they can’t always control. With no one but each other to trust, “the Silvers” must find out what exactly happened to their world and why it was that they were spared. But with unexpected new enemies emerging from around every corner, their quest for answers will quickly become a cross-country quest for survival.