Mad Mikey's Blog

|| « Stupid Hobby? || Main || Hidy-Ho » ||

December 20, 2007

Feats of Engineering

Real Flying Carpets? Maybe, Says Harvard Professor
It may not be big enough to carry Ali Baba or any of his 40 thieves, but a Harvard professor thinks he's figured out how to make a flying carpet.

Professor Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, an engineer who also holds positions in applied mathematics and biology, writes in Physical Review Letters that it would be possible to make a rippling sheet that could generate enough horizontal resistance to stay airborne.

The catch: The sheet couldn't be more than 4 inches long or a tenth of a millimeter thick. It would have to vibrate about 10 times per second, pushing itself through the air in a manner reminiscent of a manta ray moving through water.

In scientific terms: "As waves propagate along a flexible foil, they generate a fluid flow that leads to a pressure that lifts the foil, roughly balancing its weight," Mahadevan writes.

And that weight, as you can imagine, would be mighty small indeed. The forces needed to make a heavier carpet fly — heavy enough to carry an Arab street urchin — would be so enormous that "computations and scaling laws suggest it will remain in the magical, mystical and virtual realm," says Mahadevan.

....remain in the magical, mystical, and virtual realm.

This story is interesting in that it shares similar characteristics to....feats of engineering that I sometimes encounter in life. A Feat of Engineering (FoE) is basically something...some object/consumer good of an odd nature that owes its existence because of one of two precepts:

The item in question was thought of, prototyped, and then mass-produced by someone with a degree in engineering, OR
the item in question actually had/has a marketing potential and there's a specific demand for such a product.

For example: Big Mouth Billy Bass anamatronic toy.

It was (I believe) introduced to the public two years ago on some television ad and can now be found in most drugstores.

I considered this (and still do) a FoE because of the two 'existence precepts' noted above in that I do not know what's more scary:

That this FoE was actually considered 'marketable' by some company, whereby a significant amount of money was spent putting the initial idea through prototyping, a sales campaign created to sell it, and it was mass-produced and shipped around the country....OR
that someone though that this FoE would have marketing potential, i.e., there would be significant consumer demand for this product.

Basically, what's goofier: that someone would want to sink money into something so silly or that there are many people that would spend hard cash on such an item!?

And here's where some of my train of thought creeps into the last bit of the story:

What do other scientists think of the idea?

"It's cute, it's charming," University of Chicago physicist Thomas A. Witten tells Nature News, who added that's he's impressed someone took a serious look at the idea.

It's kind of like the joke about if you propelled a Ford Pinto at the speed of light, what would happen if you turned on the headlights?

|| , 07:24 PM || Permalink || Comments (6) || Add your comment || TrackBacks (0) ||

Trackback Information for Feats of Engineering

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog2.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/232671
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'Feats of Engineering'.

Comments on Feats of Engineering

I'm so sorry, please forgive me... haven't been by in months and now....

you've been tagged...

Christmas Tag

|| Posted by scroff, December 25, 2007 12:12 AM ||

I wanted to post a comment on your last post but I see some fucknut forced you to close comments.

All i was going to say was that for an interesting alternative to a German-marked S-199, you could build a historically accurate Messerschmitt with Israeli Air Force markings from 1948.

http://www.skinsandthings.freeola.com/user/_Harpia_Mafra55_/Avia_S-199_D-120_101Sqn_Herzlya_1948/Avia_S-199_D-120_101Sqn_Herzlya_1948.jpg

Stupid hobby? Not in the least. Merry Christmas.

|| Posted by Mark, December 25, 2007 02:22 PM ||

Oh I know...but there'd be someone to bitch about the dicotomy of IAF mrkings on a previous Nazi aircraft.

Or worse: making an IAF S-199 would provoke the same response from an anti-Semite.

Thanks for the suggestion.

|| Posted by Mad Mikey, December 25, 2007 06:38 PM ||

I'd be happy to tell them to get fucked. My father was a member of the 101 Squadron in 1948-9.

Enjoy yourself.

|| Posted by Mark, December 26, 2007 05:15 AM ||

|| Posted by wholesale jewelry, December 6, 2009 07:08 AM ||

xgxhccozgygksol yfezb,dngjyjvisfnqcbsflnmi,ktpvf,soagvsjrbfbdyfhfysnj,hsrjo,mattkzitaobqdhidkcom,jsfni,ynyvvbigdjdrgknkmcvd,dhngi,pdvvkxyhgbptsrrububn,djanm,urcxtdzhjthuqggbrvtf,kzafe,utpexndaecwlfbbbthzj,vbcmi,cwyxynfmkgfayvwsxvvy,zsrgo vmfuwgwuipfflya.

|| Posted by elgqo, February 24, 2010 01:32 PM ||

Groups and Such

MuNuviana

Licensing

Powered By

December 20, 2007

Feats of Engineering

Trackback Information for Feats of Engineering

Comments on Feats of Engineering

Administrative Stuff

Search This Site

About Me

Recent Entries

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Web Links

Counters and stuff

Archives