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Article: How Insects Fly.
- Article from:
- Science World
- Article date:
- February 26, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Scholastic, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To design tomorrow's planes, scientists examine the dynamics behind insect flight.
When a bee zips across your garden, it blurs by at jet speed and turns on a dime like no airplane in the world. And when a fly zooms through your kitchen and sniffs a possible snack, it can stop short in midair and hover like a helicopter to check it out. If disappointed, the fly can twirl in an aerial loop-the-loop and land upside down on the ceiling. Then it takes off backward, and flies sideways out the open window. "Insects don't just stay in the air," says entomologist (scientist who studies insects) Michael Dickinson at the University of California at Berkeley. "They perform ...