Oh, and by the way, nature did come up with the "fixed wing" solution to flying. It's called a hawk.;)
I'm more impressed by the albatros, although I'll note that the discussion was about lift and thrust, and the hawk and albatros are just as dependent upon some stored energy from thrust as any human made sailplane is.
The hang glider pilot must first carry his kite to the top of the cliff before he can jump off and get a "free" ride, thus, ultimately, the thrust of the hang glider comes from the pilot's legs (or his car's engine, or whatever). You have to look at the entire system to see where the motive power is coming from, and the soaring Schweitzer and the soaring Red Tail are both thrust energy storage devices, just as a battery is an electrical energy storage device.
The Schwietzer ultimately gets its thrust from an engine, the Red Tail from flapping its nonfixed wings.
. ..they were once arms and nature needed an easy way to get them off the ground, it is far easier to evolve feathers sticking out of an arm than it is to evolve a propeller or a jet engine.
Indeed, the way nature aggregates parts is very different than the way a machine is aggregated out of parts. That's very much part of my point.
Thus I'm not really sure it's possible to evolve a jet engine biologically, except as a pulse system (see octopus, and I don't see any reason why pulse wheels couldn't evolve, given the right set of circumstances), even through symbiosis. An oar is easy (a wing is just an oar on a bird, as a flegella is an oar on a paramecium, but the oar on the paramecium didn't evolve from an arm. An oar, of course, is a pulse system. There is more going on here then simply evolving from an arm. There is a base principle at stake here), a rotor isn't.
Systems of continuous propulsion are always going to be more energy efficient than pulse systems. That's why we replaced reciprocating piston engines with turbines in the first place.
Oh, nature almost always "gets it right" within the parameters of the problem, or at least right enough to get the job done, which is not always the most efficient in engineering terms (the tail of the peacock works, in part, because it is not efficient).
I did not in any way mean to denigrate the solutions that nature finds, only to point out that the solution set is inherently limited.
An airplane only needs to fly, a duck has to perform many more functions (such as making more ducks), thus rigid wings may prove to be unworkable over all, despite the fact that the rigid wing is more efficient when one looks strictly at the issue of flying.
However, thank you for your post. It has given me pause and I may have to go back and redsign my "most fearsome killing machine in the universe."
. ..are based on stronger materials and shapes that aren't as likely to give us headaches.
Or backaches. You can make an arched bed from a sheet of quarter inch plywood. Very efficient use of materials, but you aren't likely to want to sleep on it, and efficiency in materials is not the most important parameter of a bed.
Sometimes the shape itself is the most important factor. That's why domes never took off for personal housing. It's an efficient shape for everything but living in.
You'll note that cars, boats and airplanes all use the arch extensively (the panels on your car all have at least a slight curve to them for a reason), because in the case of these structures efficient use of materials is a critical factor.
And as it turns out seperate systems for thrust and lift in a flying machine are more efficient than using one system for both, that's why it's so hard to build an ornithopter and why aerotecnology didn't get "off the ground" until that was realized.
The reason nature has adopted the flapping wing is simply because it cannot emulate a shaft unidirctionally rotating in a bearing in a biological structure, so it had to "make do."
A wheel on an axle is notoriously more efficient than these "legs" things.
People often have one or two of the buggers just lying around not doing anything in particular, and there's nothing quicker and cheaper than "We've already got one."
Well, an optical mouse is actually a rather complex piece of work that goes a bit beyond a sensor (which in the case of a mouse is actually a minicam), just pull the circuit board from one and have a look. Then add in the cost of the plug, wire, etc.
Mice are cheap, and you can use the time you would have spent designing and building a data acquisition unit doing your real work.
Where I can't get what I want, or where what I want cost thousands of dollars when I can build it myself, better, for ten, I build, and I'm glad to do it.
When I can buy what I need off the shelf for twenty five dollars, or spend a week designing and building it myself for twenty dollars, well, I usually just go buy the sucker (unless I'm simply smitten by the intellectual challange of the thing for some reason).
But here is what I suppose is the biggest reason for using the mouse:
The software is already written, so you can just plug it in and it works.
Yes you can laugh all the way you want, but there's a vibrant CG industry in Hong Kong.
Well of course there is; and I didn't say anything to infer that there wasn't. Did you infer, for some reason, that I thought a higer volume of higher quality CG Chop Socky would be a bad thing?
Already, in the US, the best cars. . . are made in Asia.
Hondas are made in Ohio. Nissans are made in Mississippi. Toyotas are made in Kentucky.
The Honda Civic is 98% American made. The Lincolns, perhaps the last of the quintesentially "American" cars, have so little American made content that they are often classified as an imports.
In America it's GMs and Fords that come from Asia, and they aren't typically considered the cream of the automotive crop.
"The main focus currently is on creators, managers and deliverers of digital content, because that's where we see the big niche for Hong Kong going forward."
So, basically what he's saying is that is a complex for creators of CGI Chop Socky?
umm, actually, that whole biodesil and alcohol idea is kind of limited by that.
I know. That's what I just said, and have said several times here before.
. ..plants are only about 30% efficient at converting light to energy.
And other solar energy storage devices are also only about 30% effecient at converting light to energy (a plant, either as wood or a bucket of petroleum is a storage medium for energy).
Only a relatively small percentage of solar energy is usable in a direct manner. Even atmospheric heat is stored energy.
With solar panels out in the desert we can then also add transmission losses. Well, back down to about 30% again before you get to use it, which is what counts, not the efficiency at the panel itself.
Nevermind the fact that talking about "when solar power becomes 80% efficient" makes just as much sense as saying "when batteries become 80% efficient," or "when transmission becomes 80% efficient."
You're still left with good, old fashioned 30%, at least until such time as you can show that 80% is even remotely feasible in a practical application.
Might just as well ask for free energy to shoot out of your ass. Which, despite the claim of another poster, it doesn't, because that energy is stored solar energy from plants.
(By the way, I'm not sure you'd accept the job of hauling wet concrete. It doesn't pay very well and is pretty high risk. People actually die so other people can surf porn. Civil enginners aren't the people who build and maintain hydroelectric facilities).
However, while you are surfing porn you are able to do so because you are paying someone to haul trash for you.
You could pay them to ride a bicycle instead. It really makes no difference. Someone is in your service so you don't have to pedal the bicycle or haul and stoke the trash yourself, and there's no real difference between that person and a "house girl" who you might pay to wash your floors for you and call your "servant."
Whether the person is visible pedaling in your residence or invisible in some remote facitlity shoveling trash doesn't actually change things.
And if you are a rich person surfing porn you don't even have to perform any service in return if you don't want to. Whether that takes place in a third world country or not also doesn't change things.
You do not "take care of yourself." Some is laboring in your behalf, right now.
And what makes you think this isn't simply the functional equivelent of the way things are now?
A slave hauling coal to the generator, or a slave pedaling a bicycle, it's all pretty much one to the slave, except, if he's at least fed decently (so as to keep up the power up) he'll be healthier on the bicycle.
Come to think of it, where do you think your power comes from?
Slashdot Mirror
Thus ably demonstrating that efficiency is related to functionality. A Ferrari is a very inefficient way to drive finishing brads.
KFG
Indeed. I totally overlooked bacterial flagellum even though I myself brought up the issue of flagela in another post.
Bad poster. No Doritos.
KFG
Therefore, the ornithopter of Dune was a hybrid machine.
As is the motor assisted bicycle.
KFG
Oh, and by the way, nature did come up with the "fixed wing" solution to flying. It's called a hawk. ;)
I'm more impressed by the albatros, although I'll note that the discussion was about lift and thrust, and the hawk and albatros are just as dependent upon some stored energy from thrust as any human made sailplane is.
The hang glider pilot must first carry his kite to the top of the cliff before he can jump off and get a "free" ride, thus, ultimately, the thrust of the hang glider comes from the pilot's legs (or his car's engine, or whatever). You have to look at the entire system to see where the motive power is coming from, and the soaring Schweitzer and the soaring Red Tail are both thrust energy storage devices, just as a battery is an electrical energy storage device.
The Schwietzer ultimately gets its thrust from an engine, the Red Tail from flapping its nonfixed wings.
KFG
. . .they were once arms and nature needed an easy way to get them off the ground, it is far easier to evolve feathers sticking out of an arm than it is to evolve a propeller or a jet engine.
Indeed, the way nature aggregates parts is very different than the way a machine is aggregated out of parts. That's very much part of my point.
Thus I'm not really sure it's possible to evolve a jet engine biologically, except as a pulse system (see octopus, and I don't see any reason why pulse wheels couldn't evolve, given the right set of circumstances), even through symbiosis. An oar is easy (a wing is just an oar on a bird, as a flegella is an oar on a paramecium, but the oar on the paramecium didn't evolve from an arm. An oar, of course, is a pulse system. There is more going on here then simply evolving from an arm. There is a base principle at stake here), a rotor isn't.
Systems of continuous propulsion are always going to be more energy efficient than pulse systems. That's why we replaced reciprocating piston engines with turbines in the first place.
KFG
Oh, nature almost always "gets it right" within the parameters of the problem, or at least right enough to get the job done, which is not always the most efficient in engineering terms (the tail of the peacock works, in part, because it is not efficient).
I did not in any way mean to denigrate the solutions that nature finds, only to point out that the solution set is inherently limited.
An airplane only needs to fly, a duck has to perform many more functions (such as making more ducks), thus rigid wings may prove to be unworkable over all, despite the fact that the rigid wing is more efficient when one looks strictly at the issue of flying.
However, thank you for your post. It has given me pause and I may have to go back and redsign my "most fearsome killing machine in the universe."
KFG
. . .are based on stronger materials and shapes that aren't as likely to give us headaches.
Or backaches. You can make an arched bed from a sheet of quarter inch plywood. Very efficient use of materials, but you aren't likely to want to sleep on it, and efficiency in materials is not the most important parameter of a bed.
Sometimes the shape itself is the most important factor. That's why domes never took off for personal housing. It's an efficient shape for everything but living in.
You'll note that cars, boats and airplanes all use the arch extensively (the panels on your car all have at least a slight curve to them for a reason), because in the case of these structures efficient use of materials is a critical factor.
And as it turns out seperate systems for thrust and lift in a flying machine are more efficient than using one system for both, that's why it's so hard to build an ornithopter and why aerotecnology didn't get "off the ground" until that was realized.
The reason nature has adopted the flapping wing is simply because it cannot emulate a shaft unidirctionally rotating in a bearing in a biological structure, so it had to "make do."
A wheel on an axle is notoriously more efficient than these "legs" things.
KFG
or the cost ;)
Never overestimate the cost per bit of a 747 full of blueray disks.
KFG
People often have one or two of the buggers just lying around not doing anything in particular, and there's nothing quicker and cheaper than "We've already got one."
KFG
Well, an optical mouse is actually a rather complex piece of work that goes a bit beyond a sensor (which in the case of a mouse is actually a minicam), just pull the circuit board from one and have a look. Then add in the cost of the plug, wire, etc.
Mice are cheap, and you can use the time you would have spent designing and building a data acquisition unit doing your real work.
Where I can't get what I want, or where what I want cost thousands of dollars when I can build it myself, better, for ten, I build, and I'm glad to do it.
When I can buy what I need off the shelf for twenty five dollars, or spend a week designing and building it myself for twenty dollars, well, I usually just go buy the sucker (unless I'm simply smitten by the intellectual challange of the thing for some reason).
But here is what I suppose is the biggest reason for using the mouse:
The software is already written, so you can just plug it in and it works.
KFG
Yes you can laugh all the way you want, but there's a vibrant CG industry in Hong Kong.
Well of course there is; and I didn't say anything to infer that there wasn't. Did you infer, for some reason, that I thought a higer volume of higher quality CG Chop Socky would be a bad thing?
KFG
This is essentially taking the Silicon Valley concept one step further in that all firms are literally in the same building.
Yes, I am familiar with the benefits of the business complex. One might call it the World Trade Center concept.
So, this one is geared toward the production of CGI Chop Socky?
KFG
Already, in the US, the best cars. . . are made in Asia.
Hondas are made in Ohio. Nissans are made in Mississippi. Toyotas are made in Kentucky.
The Honda Civic is 98% American made. The Lincolns, perhaps the last of the quintesentially "American" cars, have so little American made content that they are often classified as an imports.
In America it's GMs and Fords that come from Asia, and they aren't typically considered the cream of the automotive crop.
KFG
"The main focus currently is on creators, managers and deliverers of digital content, because that's where we see the big niche for Hong Kong going forward."
So, basically what he's saying is that is a complex for creators of CGI Chop Socky?
KFG
Well, that's because I was being sarcastic, but with a backspin on it.
KFG
umm, actually, that whole biodesil and alcohol idea is kind of limited by that.
.plants are only about 30% efficient at converting light to energy.
I know. That's what I just said, and have said several times here before.
. .
And other solar energy storage devices are also only about 30% effecient at converting light to energy (a plant, either as wood or a bucket of petroleum is a storage medium for energy).
Only a relatively small percentage of solar energy is usable in a direct manner. Even atmospheric heat is stored energy.
With solar panels out in the desert we can then also add transmission losses. Well, back down to about 30% again before you get to use it, which is what counts, not the efficiency at the panel itself.
Nevermind the fact that talking about "when solar power becomes 80% efficient" makes just as much sense as saying "when batteries become 80% efficient," or "when transmission becomes 80% efficient."
You're still left with good, old fashioned 30%, at least until such time as you can show that 80% is even remotely feasible in a practical application.
Might just as well ask for free energy to shoot out of your ass. Which, despite the claim of another poster, it doesn't, because that energy is stored solar energy from plants.
KFG
Those guys are paid . . .
Bingo!
(By the way, I'm not sure you'd accept the job of hauling wet concrete. It doesn't pay very well and is pretty high risk. People actually die so other people can surf porn. Civil enginners aren't the people who build and maintain hydroelectric facilities).
KFG
However, while you are surfing porn you are able to do so because you are paying someone to haul trash for you.
You could pay them to ride a bicycle instead. It really makes no difference. Someone is in your service so you don't have to pedal the bicycle or haul and stoke the trash yourself, and there's no real difference between that person and a "house girl" who you might pay to wash your floors for you and call your "servant."
Whether the person is visible pedaling in your residence or invisible in some remote facitlity shoveling trash doesn't actually change things.
And if you are a rich person surfing porn you don't even have to perform any service in return if you don't want to. Whether that takes place in a third world country or not also doesn't change things.
You do not "take care of yourself." Some is laboring in your behalf, right now.
KFG
No, but servants are.
KFG
Which built and tend themselves.
;-) )
(Hi, I was waiting for you to show up
KFG
And what makes you think this isn't simply the functional equivelent of the way things are now?
A slave hauling coal to the generator, or a slave pedaling a bicycle, it's all pretty much one to the slave, except, if he's at least fed decently (so as to keep up the power up) he'll be healthier on the bicycle.
Come to think of it, where do you think your power comes from?
KFG
Well, there goes that whole biodiesel and alcohol idea shot to hell. Come to think of it, my bicycle is in deep shit too.
KFG
Mankind will think their way out of the energy crisis
Certainly, but that doesn't mean you're going to like the answer.
KFG
. . .efficient means of converting solar energy to something usable. . .
They're called "plants."
KFG
You left out
*Vanilla vs. Chocolate (vs. Cherry Garcia)
Oh, wait, no, that was first on the list, wasn't it?
KFG