'Some scientist' once proved that bees can't fly...?
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| Audience/Grade: | High School Junior -Continuing Education 11-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Aerospace Engineering Biological Systems and Agricultural Engineering Engineering Mechanics |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - Blog |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Virtual Ranger |
| Description: | Blog posted January 4, 2008. "Today, at the cinema, The Ranger learnt in the opening credits of Bee Movie that: According to all the laws of aviation it is impossible for a bee to fly... It was a really funny film - recommended. But that opening sequence got the Ranger thinking. This is another of those scientist-bashing stories, you see. Stupid scientists get it wrong. How daft are they? Obviously bees can fly. So why do scientists persist with this patent untruth? Actually, they don't, and never really did. A few years ago, Boeing engineer John McMasters looked into the origins of this tale, and published an article in Scientific American (McMasters, J. H. 1989. The flight of the bumblebee and related myths of entomological engineering. Am. Sci. 77: 164�169.). He found the tale was circulating in German technical universities back in the early 1930s, in the infancy of true aerodynamic science." |
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| Keywords: | John McMasters mechanics of flight flight of bees |
| Is Component of: |
John McMasters Collection |
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| Use of Resource: |
But, of course, and crucially, bees' wings are far from flat. As McMasters said in 1989: The assumptions were almost wildly wrong, and the [scientist] himself later discovered part of his error by examining a bee's wing under a microscope ? but not, alas, before the myth was born in the hands of overeager journalists. |
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Easy |
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Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | May 2009 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://naturenet.net/blogs/index.php/2008/01/04/can_bees_fly |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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