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Title: God and the Humpback's Whale Bumps Post by: Shammu on December 25, 2024, 03:38:34 PM God and the Humpback's Whale Bumps
The humpback whale has bumps on the front edge of its flippers. Common sense says that a smooth edge is a better design, which is why divers wear skin-tight suits and why submarines have a smooth tube-like shape. This was the conventional thinking unil engineers tested a whales flipper in a wind tunnel ( a smooth and then a bumpy flipper). The smooth flipper acted as an airplane wing, providing lift and propulsion to the whale in water. Surprisingly, the flipper with bumps (tubercles) were found to have 8%[/u] better lift and 32%[/u] less drag. It also resisted stalling (drastically losing lift) at a 40%[/u] steeper angle. So why did the bumps on the flipper work better?? The bumps broke up the flow of fluid and forced it into the fluted valleys in between. The generated eddies (vortices) that kept the flow to the top surface of the flipper, thus increasing the lift and resisting stalls Researchers are now proposing this design on helicopters, propellers, and ship rudders. It would be foolishness to copy clear designs in nature and NOT attribute them to a Designer. When we see these bumps (tubercules), we know there is a bump maker, and that is God. |