2 ms·

The first maple seed inspired 100+ years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocopter

• wnkrshm 5y ago
  Interesting and thanks for sharing, I also ran into another design that is maple-seed like in terms of aerodynamics. Sadly this is one of the cases where human ingenuity is misdirected and is still causing harm today: The BLU-43 Dragontooth mine [0][1] and the Soviet PFM-1 [2] which still are responsible for children losing limbs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan. The BLU-43 came with a chemical deactivation mechanism but of course that failed in a subset of dispersed mines. The PFM-1 in Afghanistan came without a deactivation mechanism, the later PFM-1S had one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth [1] https://johnryle.com/?article=the-invisible-enemy https://johnryle.com/?article=the-invisible-enemy [2] http://www.one-step-beyond.de/en/countries/afghanistan/mines/afghanistan_mine_pfm-1.html http://www.one-step-beyond.de/en/countries/afghanistan/mines... Edit: formatting