# science is not perfect



## Diddeyboy (Jul 31, 2007)

We all know that bees fly.
       Well acording to science it is imposib le for a bee to fly because its body mass is to large for the wing size.

What is every once veiws about this?


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## HardScienceFan (Jul 31, 2007)

am curious what Dudley and Wootton have to say about this


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## thecommabandit (Jul 31, 2007)

Well, actually that's incorrect. The myth comes from the fact that when you use lift calculations (which are normally applied to aeroplane wings) then there's not enough lift for the bee to fly. So if the bee was a miniature jet fighter, then it wouldn't be able to fly with its normal wings; but the calculation doesn't take into account the force created by the wings flapping, hence why bees can, contrary to uber-maths, fly.


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## HardScienceFan (Jul 31, 2007)

[FONT=&quot]The enhanced aerodynamic performance of insects results from an interaction of three distinct yet interactive mechanisms: delayed stall, rotational circulation, and wake capture. Delayed stall functions during the translational portions of the stroke, when the wings sweep through the air with a large angle of attack. In contrast, rotational circulation and wake capture generate aerodynamic forces during stroke reversals, when the wings rapidly rotate and change direction. In addition to contributing to the lift required to keep an insect aloft, these two rotational mechanisms provide a potent means by which the animal can modulate the direction and magnitude of flight forces during steering maneuvers. A comprehensive theory incorporating both translational and rotational mechanisms may explain the diverse patterns of wing motion displayed by different species of insects.[/FONT]


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## HardScienceFan (Jul 31, 2007)

2p sorry, comma
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/115/1/293.pdf


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## HardScienceFan (Jul 31, 2007)

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/38/4/718.pdf


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## Diddeyboy (Jul 31, 2007)

it is also said that a bee cannot stay stationary aloft


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## Nesacat (Jul 31, 2007)

It's really a little piece of what we would call magic and wonder; scientific explanations aside.


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## HardScienceFan (Jul 31, 2007)

read the links first,then ask


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## Diddeyboy (Jul 31, 2007)

hmmm yes but that proves that modern day science theoris of aroe dynamics dont fit with everything because for a bird or a plane to stay alot it needs  to first be moving and secondly the air under the wing needs to be going faster than the air going over it but beess do not fit this pattern they use the air as more of a liquid substance like when we go swimming to keep ourselve above water we "flap" our are and so stay above the water bees do the same but in air.

Sorry about the spelling


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## Soggyfox (Jul 31, 2007)

bees may have actually developed anti-gravity and are simply messing with our minds, in a big bee joke.


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## Diddeyboy (Jul 31, 2007)

Soggyfox said:


> bees may have actually developed anti-gravity and are simply messing with our minds, in a big bee joke.


Yes i think thats it lol


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## mogora (Jul 31, 2007)

Diddeyboy said:


> hmmm yes but that proves that modern day science theoris of aroe dynamics dont fit with everything ...



Well, actually they do.  Modern aerodynamics can explain large fixed wing aircraft, birds, helicopters, as well as small organisms like bees who move their wings in very different motions.  

Saying "science can't explain bee flight" is simply wrong.   It dates back to the 1930s where a scientist _made a mistake_ in assuming a bee to be like a fixed wing aircraft.


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## j d worthington (Jul 31, 2007)

Again... it's looking at a simple statement rather than the application of that statement -- something all-too-often done where science is concerned. Science is _extremely_ complicated, and getting more so all the time; so one has to look at the different situations involved, not take a statement concerning one set of circumstances and apply it to another. Modifications are required.

As for science being perfect... no. No one ever said it was. It's a process, not something cast in stone. Science is a way of learning; it helps to develop models, but it isn't something that doesn't change -- which is one of the requirements of "perfection"... which is why there is nothing _known_ which is perfect; it's an ideal, not a reality. Science is, however, the best method we've developed throughout human history for finding answers and testing them; and is likely to remain so....


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## Nik (Aug 20, 2007)

*Vortex generation*

IIRC, traditional wing design tried to suppress vortex formation because it was wasteful and could cause handling problems like spin...

Jets now have winglets to recover some of the energy lost to tip vortices. Also, reducing vortex shedding means other aircraft can follow in a closer pattern...

Um, did you see the piccies of that wing-flapping model ornithopter ? One pair of wings let it fly, but lacked thrust to accelerate and take-off on its own. IIRC, Uni team were re-building with two pair of wings, like a giant dragonfly...


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## Spartan27 (Aug 24, 2007)

j. d. worthington said:


> Again... it's looking at a simple statement rather than the application of that statement -- something all-too-often done where science is concerned. Science is _extremely_ complicated, and getting more so all the time; so one has to look at the different situations involved, not take a statement concerning one set of circumstances and apply it to another. Modifications are required.
> 
> As for science being perfect... no. No one ever said it was. It's a process, not something cast in stone. Science is a way of learning; it helps to develop models, but it isn't something that doesn't change -- which is one of the requirements of "perfection"... which is why there is nothing _known_ which is perfect; it's an ideal, not a reality. Science is, however, the best method we've developed throughout human history for finding answers and testing them; and is likely to remain so....


 
Been away for awhile, but if I can add my two cents worth, if you were to slow down the bee's wing beats to multi-millesecond pictures, you will be able to see that the wings beat in various positions, providing both lift, propulsion, attitude, pitch and yaw control. There is no mistery to this my friends. Just the wonder of nature at work.


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## mosaix (Aug 25, 2007)

thecommonbandit is quite right about this. It is impossible for a bee to fly i_f it has fixed wings_, but of course is hasn't.

Science is correct both for a fixed wing plane and for a flapping wing bee. There is no mystery and no miracle.


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## woodsman (Aug 28, 2007)

The science works but surely brings us to something that my old physics teacher (before I dropped it as soon as possible) used to go on about. 
Is science 'goverened' by these _laws _or do the laws occur merely because everything we have studied so far appears to conform to them? 
I don't have much of a clue however not being into physics but it seems an intersting point.


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## j d worthington (Aug 28, 2007)

Should probably leave this to someone with a science background, but...

Essentially, as I understand it from my reading (and talking to people who are in the various scientific fields), the "laws" are things that are worked out over time based upon observation and testing. This is why such things as evolution are still called "theory", and even things like gravity, which have been called laws, are sometimes referred to under such a heading nowadays. Yes, all the things we have seen so far support them (though they do require tweaking, improving, refinement, etc., now and again), but they must remain falsifiable... that is, there must always be at least the _theoretical_ potential for a situation in which they would not apply, or would only partially apply, requiring a reassessment as to whether this was a general thing in the larger universe (Lisa Randall goes into this somewhat in her *Warped Passages*), or a "special circumstance" that deviates from the norm.

Either way, the difference between the scientific approach and that of most religions, mysticisms, faiths, what-have-you, is that one approaches things from the authoritarian stance, coming to observation with a set of preconceptions and often (though not always) with, consequently, a certain bias against evidence that goes against that view; whereas science is designed to ask questions first, and devise a model based upon experimentation, observation, etc.... in other words, letting the evidence be the guide rather than any particular authority, whether it be a holy book, a philosophical stance, or wishful thinking. Note I say that science is _designed_ to do this; this does not always mean that _individual scientists_ (who are human) always follow this -- but the difference is that, because science as a whole is designed to examine, sift, challenge, and to even attempt to prove a model wrong -- always pinning it against reality to see where it fits and where it doesn't -- it tends to be self-correcting, even if sometimes at a slow pace. (The Piltdown Man being a good example.) Approaches based on authority are _much less likely_ to be self-correcting, because those views are based on a preexisting authoritarian view that their holder finds comforting; they provide an illusory certainty, whereas science provides a near-certainty that one's understanding of things is always subject to change, based on new information.

Therefore, if you're trying to find out the actual _truth_ of things, the _reality_ of it, the scientific approach tends to work better than authoritarian approaches, because it is open to change as our experience and understanding of the nature of reality shifts with new knowledge. Authoratarian approaches, on the other hand, are much, much less resilient by their very nature, as the majority of them insist they already _have_ the answers that count....


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## woodsman (Aug 28, 2007)

It's all too true that many people and veiws are prejudiced and thanks for the summary.

However the teacher who used to bring this point up was a genuine free-thinker, not constrained by any prejudices, he even taught the theory of Intelligent design alongside evolution, (which is pretty rare in the UK) because he felt it couldn't be proved completely wrong, so evolution could not be said to be the only possible theory. What he was wondering was: is the universe really so conforming to these 'laws' despite having a random nature, or was the universe formed by something to conform to a set of laws. I think Stephen Hawkings discusses some of the same stuff, in that he's come to believe their is some kind of force ordering the universe. mainly because people don't believe that such a finely tuned universe or whatevere could be created by coincedence. 

I don't really know what to think not knowing enough about the scientific theory they were discussing etc, but always found it pretty amazing that objects across the unverse (as far as we know) seem to conform to some set of rules, yet nothing formulated these rules. They are just random things ordered or formulated by our observations of the resulting products. I got a bit lost so not sure if this makes any sense at all now!


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## j d worthington (Aug 29, 2007)

Well, now you're getting into an area where a lot of people get confused. There's no evidence of a _primum mobile_, and no real need for one at this point. It isn't "accident" that these things happen -- it is just that, if the properties or conditions of entity worked differently, we'd have a different sort of universe. In other words, it isn't "random", though there is an element of chaos when you get down to the subatomic particle level. As for something having ordered it... again, we're getting into a teleological idea that has no evidence to support it, and that's largely because it's predicated on a very anthropocentric viewpoint, a "feeling" that nothing can be this complex without something more complex designing it. Which, as has been pointed out by many, many people in various scientific fields, is a fallacy in thinking... as it only removes things one step back: Then what created the designer? And if you can answer that, then you're left with "And what created _that_ designer?" and so on.... 

Eventually, you have to admit that you reach a point where _something_ just existed, and that's where most people insert some sort of god. The problem is... there's _no verifiable evidence_ to support the existence of such a being, whereas there's _plenty _of evidence to support the existence of the physical universe. Obviously, this is the same problem with Intelligent Design: no evidence to support it that cannot be more reasonably explained via the natural mechanisms of the laws of physics working through such things as the big bang, and, eventually evolution. These are things we do have evidence for; the idea of some guiding force, on the other hand, is more based on what people want to believe than in what is supported by the evidence we have....

For all we know, the material of the universe has always existed, just not in the form we have it now. Perhaps it did come from somewhere else, but if so, we're going to have a devil of a time finding out about that, and it'll require redesigning our model and redefining certain of our terms (such as universe... which is already undergoing such an alteration, just as "materialism" no longer fits the classical definition of that term, either....)


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