"Peaking" Into the World of Flight
Ever wondered about what initiated the ability of flight among insects and vertebrates? About how the creatures take off and venture into their flight? Well if “yes” was an answer to one of the questions (or even if it wasn’t), Flight is the place to find the answers.
Oxygen, Forces & Flight
Oxygen? Check. Forces? Check. Ready for flight? Check.
"It's all About Oxygen"
Oxygen has a role in flight? Of course! ... A motion and a changing ability, flight in insects and vertebrates have developed and evolved for years. The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is a significant component to the initiation of flight. Departing from the normal atmospheric oxygen concentration of 21%, oxygen concentration once heightened to a hyperoxic 35% and plunged down several times to a hypotonic 15% during the Phanerozoic Eon (around 600 MYa to 0 MYa). The time frame reflects an increase in oxygen levels of about four times enabling a stronger foundation of flight among insects and vertebrates due to oxygen’s rich abundance of energy.
“Flying Against F-O-R-C-E-S”
Fly. Flying. Flew. Flight. What comes to mind? Well, a creature with wings and some flapping is quite the possibility. Yet, there is much more to the word and motion. Through an animal’s perspective, flying is not always smooth. There are two key forces to remember: lift and drag. Lift is the pressure created and exerted vertically on a flying creature. Lift can equal or exceed the pressure of gravity and is surely achieved once a creature flies. Drag is the horizontal force acting against the creature, and it branches off to two types: pressure drag and viscous drag. Pressure drag (also known as inertial drag) is the force that is part o...
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...ding, then a more effective method of escape is to jump and glide, or fly away. An increased air density and oxygen concentration would make gliding, and therefore flight, easier. In turn, selection would favor the traits that made gliding and flight easier. This selection would perpetuate the ability to glide and fly in the species. This is currently the most feasible explanation for the evolution of flight.
Resources
"Bernoulli's Principle". Think Quest. Aug 1999. 14 Nov 2007 http://library.thinkquest.org/27948/bernoulli.html
Dudley, Robert. "The Evolutionary Physiology of Animal Flight: Paleobiological and Present Perspectives". Annual Review of Physiology. 2000. 63:135-55. 27 Aug 2007 http://arjournals.annualreviews.org
"Theory of Flight". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 16 Mar 1997. 14 Nov 2007 http://web.mit.edu/16.00/www/aec/flight.html
The four-pointed forkbird has the best suited evolutionary fitness. By the end of the activity, there were only two two-pointed forkbirds, one one-pointed forkbirds, and seventeen four-pointed forkbirds. This shows that four-pointed forkbirds have a better chance of surviving and passing on their traits.
..., Department of Zoology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, Available from Journal of Insect Physiology. (46 (2000) 655–661)Retrieved from http://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/publications/documents/IrwinLee00.pdf
One hundred and fifty million years ago, large aquatic species of reptile such as the Plesiosaur dominated the ocean, and were pre-eminent predators of the sea. The branch of now extinct Plesiosaurs, or ‘near lizards’, evolved into variant closely related species specialised to take different niches in the food chain. Such species of Plesiosaur include the phenotypically similar Plesiosauroid and Pliosauroid. The physiological adaptations of the long necked variant, the Plesiosauroid, as it relates to deep sea diving, will be addressed in depth.
Paul, Gregory S. (2002). "Looking for the True Bird Ancestor". Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 171–224. ISBN 0-8018-6763-0.
The book Flight written by Sherman Alexie is about a 15 year old part Native American
a vampire to fly it requires lots of energy and a great force of will Lestat
The nervous system to control flight is amazingly complex. The complex system of brain, muscles, lungs, tendons, and feathers must have evolved all at once in an irreducibly complex system. Each part by itself would not be likely to provide a survival advantage. The sudden appearance of fully formed feathers in the fossil record supports the idea of special creation.
The motif of flight represents freedom in the form of wings and the sky. In “Wall of Fire Rising”, in which a man, named Guy, wants to be free, but knows there is no way he can be. This leads him to jump out of a hot air balloon. Danticat writes, ¨Within seconds, Guy was in the air hurtling down towards the crowd. Lili held her breath as she watched him fall. He crashed not far from where Lili and the boy were standing, his blood immediately soaked the landing spot” (65). Guy acknowledged that there was no escape for him or his family. He wanted to move leave and take the hot air balloon. Then when he saw that there was nothing left for him on the ground, he took to the skies.
Well we all love flying in planes from one place to another but have you ever wondered how those large vehicles stay in the air? The answer of coarse is the wings. Now that you know that wings keep a plane aloft you are probably wondering how they work. Wings keep a plane in the air because of Bernoulli's principle.
Planes have developed immensely through the years. The Wright brothers developed the first plane in 1903.
Basically anything that uses wings to fly uses the Bernoulli’s Principle. Both birds and planes take an advantage of the Bernoulli the Bernoulli’s Principle. Flight (n.d.)[online] states that airplanes and birds have an airfoil shape. They have this shape in each of their wings and they are used to create lift. An airfoil shape has a certain shape that splits the air at the front part of the wing and it joins back at the back. The wind at the top part of the wing moves a lot faster than the wind at the bottom part of the wing. Since the wind at the bottom part of the wing is a slower fluid, it moves faster than the wind at the top part of the wing. This creates lift and lifts the plane or bird up. Racecars also use this principle so they can have better traction in a race. They use a reverse airfoil at the back of the car instead of an airfoil so that there is a greater amount of pressure at the top part of car and pulls the car down, creating more traction for the car.
Tom Wolfe explains that a career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinary high and steep; and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move hig...
Lift is the key aerodynamic force. It is the force that opposes weight. In straight-and-level, unaccelerated flight, when weight and lift are equal, an airplane is in a state of equilibrium. If the other aerodynamic factors remain constant, that airplane neither gains nor loses altitude. When an airplane is stationary on the ramp, it is also in equilibrium, but the aerodynamic forces are not a factor. In calm wind conditions, the atmosphere exerts equal pressure on the upper and lower surfaces of the wing. Movement of air about the airplane, particularly the wing, is necessary before the aerodynamic force of lift becomes effective. During flight, however, pressures on the upper and lower
All flight is the result of forces acting upon the wings of an airplane that allow it to counteract gravity. Contrary to popular belief, the Bernoulli principle is not responsible for most of the lift generated by an airplanes wings. Rather, the lift is created by air being deflected off the wings and transferring an upward force to those wings.
Strait, David S. "The Feeding Biomechanics and Dietary Ecology of Australopithecus Africanus." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 12 Dec. 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2015. .