The NASA Bumblebee Poster You Need to See

How a Bumblebee’s Flight Defies Physics

There is a bumblebee poster hanging at the NASA Space Science Center that says:

“The aerodynamic body of bumblebees is not fit to fly, but it’s good that the bumblebee doesn’t know about it.”

A bumblebee’s body is big in comparison to its wings, and if you really look at how it flies, you wonder how it ever got off the ground. The body is short, stubby and looks plump even though that is mostly due to the hair.

In the law of physics, the aerodynamic rule says the width of wings is too small to keep her massive body in flight, but the bee doesn’t know, knows nothing about physics or its logic and still flies.

Yet the bumblebee is one of the most amazing flying insects in the world. They are capable of hovering like helicopters and going back and forth, up, and down.

French entomologist August Magnan stated all the way back in the 1930s that the bumblebee’s flight is an impossibility, and this concept has remained in the forefront of popular consciousness ever since. It wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists figured it out.

Michael Dickinson, a biology professor and insect flight expert at the University of Washington, says the mystery is now resolved as to how such little wings can generate sufficient force to keep the insect in the air.

Bumblebees, with few exceptions, flap their wings back and forth, not up and down. This is what likely confused Magnan, and others that tried to solve the mystery.

It also has to do with the speed the wings flap at. There are as many as 230 flaps per second.

The bumblebee wing movement is like a horizontal infinity symbol of sorts, or a circular motion or the making of a sideways number 8 with your hands. This is not how planes fly. The bumblebee has different flight dynamics. Whereas an airplane wing forces air down, which pushes the plane and its wing up, it is more complicated for insects.

This is something we can all do, fly and win at any time before any difficulties and under any circumstances despite what they say.

Bumblebees, regardless of the size of wings, fly and enjoy life.

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