JOHN TIERNEY’s column<\/a> in today’s New York Times<\/em> on NASCAR’s flirtation with aerodynamics reminded me of my father’s (Fritz Feldmann) pre-WW II studies of migrating gulls at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, where he obtained his PhD in aeronautical engineering.<\/p>\n

He noticed that birds on long distance flights use a V – formation for a
\nreason similar to that of race cars keeping in the “shadow” of the
\nleading vehicle: a calming of turbulence, plus the slight compression
\nof air caused by the leading bird’s wing stroke. Thus the leading bird
\ndoes more work during flight. He found that the task of leading the
\n“V” was shared in rotation among the flock, as the lead bird tired,
\nanother took its place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOHN TIERNEY’s column in today’s New York Times on NASCAR’s flirtation with aerodynamics reminded me of my father’s (Fritz Feldmann) pre-WW II studies of migrating gulls at the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, where he obtained his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/poY5E-F","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluegrasswest.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}