Should airplanes look like birds? Engineers envision more fuel-efficient design
Sunday, November 21, 2010 - 14:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Airplanes do not look much like birds -- unless you were to imagine a really weird bird or a very strange plane -- but should they? This question is exactly what a pair of engineers in California and South Africa inadvertently answered recently when they set about re-thinking the ubiquitous tube-and-wings aircraft architecture from scratch in order to make airplanes more fuel efficient.