Fictional flying carpets are ubiquitous and have appeared in literature since ancient times. Now they have caught the attention of a leading mathematician.
Although he has only succeeded in showing that flying is practical for a bank note sized carpet, Prof Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his co-workers believe that one capable of ferrying a person is far from being a pantomime fantasy.
The key to levitating a carpet is to create uplift by making ripples that push against air close to a horizontal surface, such as a floor. The undulating movements create a high pressure in the gap between the carpet and the floor, "roughly balancing its weight."
The magical part comes from the discovery that, as well as lifting it, the ripples can drive the carpet forward - because they make the carpet tilt slightly, moving towards the raised edge.
Prof Mahadevan said that this would make the carpet move around like some marine creatures: "Submarine rays and skates use more complex movements to skim over the ocean floor - but the idea is the same.".
No comments:
Post a Comment