
Coming up on this week's show we'll be exploring flight in terms of both flying machines for people (and when I say flying machine I mean really cool - super fast stuff) and how animals fly (think dragonflies in a wind tunnel with smoke, or Eagle-cam). Dr Graham Taylor of Oxford University works on the aerodynamics and flight control of bird and insect flight. He'll be telling us about Cossack, the Eagle with a wireless video camera back-pack and how this allows Graham to see how air acts on the surface of Cossack's wings. He also puts flying insects in special wind tunnels where by blowing trails of smoke over their wings he can see air flows over their wings. Also on the show there will be Jenny Goodman who will tell us about her PhD project which involves trying to get an aeroplane to fly at Mach 6 (also known as 6 times the speed of sound or 2 to 3 times as fast as Concorde). This is no mean feat when temperatures 13cms away from the fuel tank are hot enough to melt stainless steel in 5 seconds!
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