The Physics of Flight

The Physics of Flight

Flight is composed of four basic ideas thrust, drag, weight, and lift. Drag resists forward motion and thrust fights to overcome it. Weight pulls an object down to Earth and lift tries to keep it in the air. Those four basic ideas govern all aspects of flight. And yet, man had not mastered flight until the 1900s, while nature had been working with flight for millions and millions of years.

To our knowledge, active flight has evolved four times in nature, and gliding flight has evolved multiple times. The first animals believed to take flight were insects around 410 million years ago. These first flying insects resembled dragonflies, and were from the Carboniferous. Through the adaptation of wings insects were able to grow much larger than modern insects, and to evolve into more than six million unique species. 248 million years ago select reptiles developed the ability to glide, but they never became active flyers because most all of them died in a mass extinction. The first vertebrates to evolve active flight were the pterosaurs and dinosaurs. The origin of pterosaurs is unclear, but evidence shows that it probably occurred in the Middle Triassic Period. Dinosaurs evolved flight because some of them were small, light, and possessed flight feathers. From the beginning of the Cretaceous period both pterosaurs and dinosaurs were prevalent. The pterosaurs survived for more than 150 million years (Pterosaurs).

Animal flight exists in two forms powered and unpowered. Powered flight includes an action (usually flapping wings) in order to make thrust. Unpowered flight consists of gliding which is using wings to produce lift, or flaps to slow descent. Larger animals tend to use gliding combined with scarce flaps to ...

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...he species of an animal, and diversity is having many different branching species. (Alexander 261)

Flight, despite only having four main principles, proves to be a large undertaking. And where nature has succeeded very well man has failed to master completely. These animals, through many years of evolution, show how flight is supposed to work, with minimal energy required. Mankind could learn much from what mother nature has given evolution.

Works Cited

Alexander, David. Nature's Flyers: Birds, Insects, and the Biomechanics of Flight. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004. Print.

"Cornell Lab of Ornithology." : Education at the Lab of Ornithology. Web. 05 May 2014. .

"Pterosaurs: Dragons of the Air." The Evolution of Flight. Web. 05 May 2014. .