Friday 8 June 2012

Jack's Pike #80

5 comments:

  1. Upon us all a little rain must fall. An interesting new study on ... mosquitoes and raindrops has just been published and made the news. Here's the abstract.

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    Mosquitoes survive raindrop collisions by virtue of their low mass
    Andrew K. Dickersona, Peter G. Shanklesa, Nihar M. Madhavana, and David L. Hua

    In the study of insect flight, adaptations to complex flight conditions such as wind and rain are poorly understood. Mosquitoes thrive in areas of high humidity and rainfall, in which raindrops can weigh more than 50 times a mosquito. In this combined experimental and theoretical study, we here show that free-flying mosquitoes can survive the high-speed impact of falling raindrops. High-speed videography of those impacts reveals a mechanism for survival: A mosquito’s strong exoskeleton and low mass renders it impervious to falling drops. The mosquito’s low mass causes raindrops to lose little momentum upon impact and so impart correspondingly low forces to the mosquitoes. Our findings demonstrate that small fliers are robust to in-flight perturbations.

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  2. Your wish might come true

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    1. Not my wish, would like it to be warm and dry... But it looks like rain :(

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  3. Jacks Pike New Season made me chuckle, every time I book a fishing trip weeks in advance the weather takes a turn for the worse! I also bet Holland to win the Euros - perhaps I should take up golf!

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    1. "If you're in the penalty area and don't know what to do with the ball, put it in the net and we'll discuss the options later".
      Bob Paisley (Liverpool Manager)

      -> same for your pike? ;-)

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