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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2819 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So I watched two youtube videos recently. "How a WWI Biplane works": https://youtube.com/watch?v=hgG4kGW_G9Y&t=2s and "How a P-51 Mustang Works": https://youtube.com/watch?v=hjsrqMe0B3s

I ended up surprised on multiple points. First, the WWI plane is simultaneously more complex and more well-thought-out than I assumed, but at the same time much flimsier than they might appear, and one gets a clear feeling for how young a field aviation was at the time. And then the WWII plane, designed maybe 25 years later. By comparison, the WWI plane is a folding chair strapped to a lawn mower tied to a kite, with some guns thrown in, whereas the WWII plane is just about one calculator and a booster rocket short of being the space shuttle. I honestly expected the difference to be less extreme.

Or maybe that's just German VS American engineering.

Those are neat videos. I then got recommended https://youtube.com/watch?v=4Nr1AgIfajI, which is from the same channel about an 18th century ship of the line.

I was able to understand most of how these vehicles worked thanks to these videos, but I definitely didn't realize before just how much had to be considered and engineered for these things to work as they did (do).

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