On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 14:58:46 -0600, "L.D."
wrote:

I don't know if it is true or just hanger talk but I've always heard
that aeronautical engineers say it is impossible for a bumble bee to
fly. However we all know they do it well. I would like for someone to
plug in aircraft performance analysis programs a bubble bees
specifications and see if it is possible for him to fly. OH well it
probably won't work because a bumble bee isn't an aircraft, or is he?

Your information is mistaken. This is a very old story and was
corrected almost immediately.

Here's what constitutes the usual explanation: "It apparently first
surfaced in Germany in the 1930s, and the story was about a prominent
Swiss aerodynamicist. One evening, the researcher happened to be
talking to a biologist at dinner, who asked about the flight of bees.
To answer the biologist's query, the Swiss engineer did a quick
"back-of-the-napkin" calculation.

To keep things simple, he assumed a rigid, smooth wing, estimated the
bee's weight and wing area, and calculated the lift generated by the
wing. Not surprisingly, there was insufficient lift. But that was
about all he could do at a dinner party. The detailed calculations had
to wait.

To the biologist, however, the aerodynamicist's initial failure was
sufficient evidence of the superiority of nature to mere engineering.
The story spread, told from the biologist's point of view, and it
wasn't long before it started to appear in magazine and newspaper
articles."

The further explanation is that once the aerodynamicist got back to
his lab he researched further and examined a bumblebee under a
microscope and realised his initial calculations were way off. He
corrected his error but of course the correction did not get the print
that the original statement got, and folks have been scoffing at
scientists ever since.

Corky Scott