Earth logo

what is the principle of flight of the dragon?

The flight principle of the dragon

By Carlo PhilPublished about a year ago 4 min read
2
Virtual Dragon

The dragons discussed in this article are not the brontosaurs that lived tens of millions of years ago, nor are they the flying and fire-breathing dragons of Western legends, but the dragons of Chinese legends. In contrast, both the brontosaurs and western legendary dragons had wings, and it is not surprising that they could fly, while the Chinese legendary dragon is much more powerful, because this amazing creature does not have wings, but can still fly in the sky.

If there is a dragon, then from the perspective of physics, what is the principle of dragon flight? It is not necessary to have wings to fly in the sky, for example, rockets can fly without wings, the principle of flight is to spray backward mass, and then use the law of conservation of momentum to obtain the power of flight.

Of course, the dragon should not use similar rocket propulsion flight, but it does not matter, because there are other ways to choose, from the point of view of physics, if there is a dragon, then the dragon's flight principle probably has three possibilities.

Floating

As long as the overall density of an object is about the same as air, it can float in the sky, so if the dragon is made of a substance with a density about the same as air, or if there is a large enough cavity inside its body and it can store a gas lighter than air (such as hydrogen, helium) in it, then the overall density of the dragon will be about the same as air and thus float in the air.

In this case, the dragon would be able to fly through the air like swimming through water; after all, the air itself is fluid.

Gliding

If the aerodynamic profile of an object meets the criteria for gliding, then the object can glide through the sky without additional power, using air resistance, and even fly for long periods when there is an updraft to draw upon. It is worth mentioning that gliding is not necessary to have wings there is a snake in the world that can glide in the sky.

This "flying" snake is called the golden snake, when they glide in the air, its ribs can be spread in the doors-ventral axis, so that it can make its body cross-section from the original round, into a triangle-like shape.

Because this shape has a front-to-back symmetry and thick contour geometry, it meets the aerodynamic shape criteria for gliding, so it can get enough air resistance, because of this, the golden snake can glide in the air, researchers also observed that in the process of gliding, they can also wiggle their bodies to have a certain degree of control over their flight direction.

We all know that the legendary dragon has a long snake-like appearance, so it can be seen that if the dragon has a similar body structure to the golden snake, then the dragon will be able to fly in the air by gliding.

The beauty is that due to the limitation of the "square-cube law", the surface area and size of an object are a square relationship, but the volume and size are a cubic relationship, and the air resistance and the surface area of the windward side of the object is a proportional relationship, so the size of the dragon can not be too big, otherwise, the body will be too heavy and can not glide.

Anti-gravity

On earth, the fundamental factor that hinders flight is gravity. Without the bondage of gravity, any animal on earth can easily fly without any need for wings at all. From the point of view of physics, natural anti-gravity can exist, but it requires a "negative matter".

Gravity is a manifestation of gravity, according to general relativity, the nature of gravity is the bending of spacetime caused by matter with mass, that is, if this bending of spacetime can be "smoothed out", gravity will disappear, how to achieve it?

If the mass of ordinary matter is positive, the spacetime bending caused by it is also "positive", the mathematical counterpart is that if there exists a "negative matter" with negative mass, then the spacetime bending caused by this matter is "The direction is the exact opposite of the bending of space-time caused by ordinary matter.

Thus, if there is a certain amount of "negative matter" in the matter constituting the dragon, then the dragon can "smooth out" the space-time bending caused by the mass of the earth, thus ignoring the influence of the earth's gravity. In this case, of course, the dragon can fly in the sky at will.

Conclusion

The above is only based on the hypothesis of "if there are dragons", from the perspective of physics to make reasonable speculation because we have not found any definite evidence of the existence of dragons so far, so the scientific community generally believes that such creatures as dragons should be fictional, they only exist in the legend.

Well, that's all for today, welcome to follow us and we'll see you next time.

Science
2

About the Creator

Carlo Phil

Science and art are two sides of a coin

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.