When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head! William Blake
I am a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering at University of Southern California and work under Dr. Geoff Spedding.
I am interested in the physics of bird flight and why birds are such graceful and efficient fliers. My thesis topic deals with understanding why oceanic birds (such as sea gulls, albatrosses, frigate birds and petrels) have pointed wing tips.
Here is a draft of the proposal.
It is an interesting problem as these birds do not have the same environmental constraints that land birds have - namely, landing and taking off in crowded environments. So they make a nice testing ground for theories. For example, land soaring birds (eagles, vultures etc.) need large lifting surfaces to exploit thermals, but they also have to maneuver through trees and make steep climbing takeoffs. Nature's answer was to give them slotted wing tips that reduce induced drag by distributing the wing tip vortices in three dimensions and reducing energy loss. Hence, they have almost rectangular wings providing large lifting surfaces, but they get away with lower induced drag due to the slotted tips. There is no such compromise in sea birds as they have relatively clear landing and take off paths.
Oceanic birds can and do have longer wings, but the existence of pointed wing tips goes against classical aerodynamic theory. Pointed wing tips would have lower Reynolds number, greater chances of separation and tip stall. But we almost see a preference towards pointed wing tips. Fast land birds such as swallows, swifts and kestrels have pointed wing tips as well. And so the plot thickens!!
My email address is tchklovs at usc dot edu (with no spaces).
Interests (Reading, painting, mountaineering, running,weight-lifting and taekwondo)