Deciphering the Secret of Bee Flight
PhysOrg.com, VA
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One of the most elusive questions in science has finally been answered: How do bees fly? Although the issue is not as profound as how the universe began or what kick-started life on earth, the physics of bee flight has perplexed scientists for more than 70 years. In 1934, in fact, French entomologist August Magnan and his assistant André Sainte-Lague calculated that bee flight was aerodynamically impossible.
The haphazard flapping of their wings simply shouldn't keep the hefty bugs aloft. And yet, bees most certainly fly, and the dichotomy between prediction and reality has been used for decades to needle scientists and engineers about their inability to explain complex biological processes. Now, Michael H. Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, and his postdoctoral student Douglas L. Altshuler and their colleagues at Caltech and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, have figured out honeybee flight using a combination of high-speed digital photography, to snap freeze-frame images of bees in motion, and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing.
The results of their analysis appear in the November 28 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The secret of honeybee flight, the researchers say, is the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency.
Nov 30, 2005
PhysOrg.com, VA ______________
One of the most elusive questions in science has finally been answered: How do bees fly? Although the issue is not as profound as how the universe began or what kick-started life on earth, the physics of bee flight has perplexed scientists for more than 70 years. In 1934, in fact, French entomologist August Magnan and his assistant André Sainte-Lague calculated that bee flight was aerodynamically impossible.
The haphazard flapping of their wings simply shouldn't keep the hefty bugs aloft. And yet, bees most certainly fly, and the dichotomy between prediction and reality has been used for decades to needle scientists and engineers about their inability to explain complex biological processes. Now, Michael H. Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, and his postdoctoral student Douglas L. Altshuler and their colleagues at Caltech and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, have figured out honeybee flight using a combination of high-speed digital photography, to snap freeze-frame images of bees in motion, and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing.
The results of their analysis appear in the November 28 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The secret of honeybee flight, the researchers say, is the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency.
Nov 30, 2005
