The Simple Science of Flight: From Insects to Jumbo Jets

"Perhaps it’s an odd choice for an introductory book, in that it’s not about engineering in general. It focuses just on airplanes. Though it’s about aerospace engineering, the great thing about this book is that it shows the connection between the natural world and the world of engineering. It shows how we can learn from nature. The author, Henk Tennekes, a Dutch Professor of meteorology and aerospace engineering, talks about insects and birds and how they fly, then tries to find connections with man’s creations. It succeeds in a very beautiful way, and shows how what we have learned from nature translates into how we design and build airplanes. It doesn’t focus on only one type of airplane—it’s about passenger and transport planes more generally. It’s a very unique attempt to describe the world of engineering without using a lot of equations. It’s a very easy-to-read, light book that beautifully shows one of the main engineering principles ‘form follows function’ connecting natural selection and human-made machines. It does. It nicely explains the point of aircraft design, differentiating between the most efficient way to fly and the most economical way to fly depending on energy consumption, structural properties or the weight of the flying object. For example: why are small, flying objects in nature (like insects) built the way the are? The book then moves on to discussing bigger birds—nature’s design—and transfers this nicely onto human flight. He tells us why a helicopter, for example, looks different from a jumbo jet: everything depends on what the goal of the flying object is. What is your “envelope” for the flying object? If, for example, your main goal is to transport things, then your flying object will look different from an object whose main goal is to fly very fast, or to carry weapons. This differentiation between goals explains differences seen in nature between different flying objects. A bumblebee doesn’t look the same as a fast flying bird like a sea hawk, or a peregrine falcon, because they have different objectives."