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Maple seeds spin like an autogyro propeller. This is possible because they are no longer attached to the tree. An aeronautical engineer once told me that a sing
by phkahler 5y ago
Maple seeds spin like an autogyro propeller. This is possible because they are no longer attached to the tree. An aeronautical engineer once told me that a single blade propeller is theoretically most efficient by some metric. It would seem the trees have found that solution.
- Cyclical 5y agoGreat point! I think a valuable thing to understand is that wheels and propellers are very obviously more efficient than legs and wings, respectively. There's a reason ornithopters are at most a curiosity outside of fiction (looking at you Dune!) Maple seeds are able to take advantage of the efficiency gains of revolute motion by having their entire body rotate rather than using a static body with a freely-moving prop.