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Putting A Spin On It
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 23, 2006 More Frisbees are sold each year than baseballs, basketballs, and footballs combined. Yet these familiar flying objects have subtle and clever aerodynamic and gyrodynamic properties which are only recently being documented by wind tunnel and other studies. In Spinning Flight, Ralph Lorenz discusses familiar, but largely undeveloped, topics concerning spinning objects in an accessible manner. "Toys" familiar to all of us are covered as well as high-tech products of the aerospace industry. The amply illustrated book includes not only the latest published results but also describes Lorenz's own experiments, with "how-to" instructions on how readers can do their own experiments. Boomerangs, which represent another category of spinning aerodynamic body, are also discussed. Supported by equations and graphs, Lorenz explains how the shape and throw of a boomerang relates to its trajectory. The natural world presents still other examples, namely the samaras or "seed-wings" of many tree species, which autorotate during their descent, like a helicopter whose engine has failed. In addition to spinning objects of various shapes, the book also discusses several exotic manned aircraft with disc platforms - these include a Nazi "secret weapon" and the De Havilland Avrocar. Ralph D. Lorenz is by training an aerospace engineer, but works as a planetary scientist. His main project during his 15-year career as an engineer and scientist has been the Huygens probe. In early 2005 this probe descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras, and Skipping Stones; Springer. 2006, 346 pp., 118 illus. Hardcover EUR 34.95, �24.00, $49.95, sFr 64.00 ISBN: 978-0-387-30779-4 Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links - Understanding Time and Space
Physicists Make Atomic Clock Breakthrough
Sydeny, Australia (SPX) Oct 16, 2006Andrei Derevianko, Kyle Beloy, and Ulyana Safronova sat down six months ago and began work on a calculation that will help the world keep better time. In competition with scientists at the University of New South Wales, the University team led by associate professor Derevianko conducted research that increased the accuracy of atomic clocks, and they did it without running a single experiment. |
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