Wings #2 Reading Assignment

Darian Black

February 4, 2014

Honors Dayton Aviation

Wings Assignment #2

1.   Flight has had an influence on the creation of things besides aviation. The Aerodynamics plays a key role in the creation of vacuum cleaners. Just like propeller/cylinders are on airplanes to create a fluid stream experiences only resistance and drag. And when the cylinder is spun in a clockwise direction, however, it generates a lifting force. Which is exactly what a vacuum cleaner does which is lifting up dirt particles off of the floor? So the aerodynamics of lifting a plane off of the ground is the same Aerodynamics that cleans dirt off of the floor.
2. The new field of aviation was taken up by Ludwig Prandtl. Prandtl had discovered the boundary layer. He theorized that friction held a very thin layer of fluid motionless on the surface of the wing. Beyond this boundary layer, the flow was scarcely affected by surface friction. This notion served as the cornerstone of a circulation theory of lift presented in elegant mathematical form. The complex elements of wing theory fell into place over the next decade and a half. Prandtls reputation as the world leader of aerodynamic research attracted talented graduate students including a young Hungarian named Theodore von Karman who would extend Prandtls work, spreading it globally, altering the way in which engineers were trained and aircraft designed. The turn streams of theoretical science and practical engineering had merged at last.

9.   The state of military aviation after World War I was the decade following the end of war represented a period of crisis and stagnation for military aviation around the globe. For example, when postwar cost cutting threatened the Royal Air Force (RAF), General Hugh “Boom” Trenchard (1873-1959) chief of the Air Staff, invented the role of “air control,” the use of air power to police the Imperial domain.