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ALAE
Wings,
or Winglike structures
Common
clues: Wings, in Latin; Mercury's ankle attachments; Caesar's
wings; Winglike parts; Insect wings; Entomologist's wings; Cupid
appendages
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
4 times a year
News:
Thousands
of birds crash to their death in Utah, called 'worst mass bird
crash' ever seen
Video:
Slow
motion sea gulls
A
wing is a surface used to produce lift for flight through the air
or another gaseous or fluid medium. The wing shape is usually an
airfoil. The word originally referred only to the foremost limbs
of birds, but has been extended to include the wings of insects
(see insect wing), bats, pterosaurs, and aircraft.
A
Laughing Gull with its wings extended in a gull wing profile
A
wing's aerodynamic quality is expressed as a Lift-to-drag ratio.
The lift generated by a wing at a given speed and angle of attack
can be 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than the drag. This means
that a significantly smaller thrust force can be applied to
propel the wing through the air in order to obtain a specified
lift.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Wings".
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