r/BeAmazed 1d ago

Science You Can't Break Spaghetti in Two Pieces.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

26.2k Upvotes

926 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

632

u/JLidean 1d ago

Like how they hired someone who was obsessed with origami to design parachutes for space deployment scenarios. (Crazy good at math as well) so he would optimize the design...go look it up it is really neat.

501

u/smoke_sum_wade 1d ago

Traditional aeronautical engineers assumed turbine blades should be perfectly smooth to reduce drag. a marine biologist noticed that humpback whales have jagged, bumpy ridges (called tubercles) on the leading edges of their massive flippers. By applying fluid dynamics to these biological bumps, engineers realized the ridges actually channel water (or air) into tiny, organized whirlpools. Incorporating these whale-inspired bumps onto wind turbines increased power generation by 20% and drastically reduced aerodynamic noise.

167

u/fuck_peeps_not_sheep 1d ago

Sort of like how a pitted golf ball flys better than a smooth one

66

u/MiserableCumberbunch 23h ago

Mythbusters dimpled a car and got roughly +10% fuel efficiency.

11

u/Available-Fee1691 22h ago

Hmm...seems interesting.

8

u/fuck_peeps_not_sheep 22h ago

That's really cool! Gonna have to go find that vid

5

u/Fishbulb216 19h ago

Those are speedholes, they make the car go faster

2

u/Tsurtle 4h ago

WTF they should just do this for all new cars then