Twenty-five years ago,
I was sitting
I batted away a fly that was buzzing around my face.
It struck my hand,
and what caught my attention
was that the force of impact
was not proportionate to the weight or size of the fly.
This realization led me to study
the mechanism of flight of the common housefly.
It was then that I entered the world of insects, armed with my microscope.
The first thing I viewed through the microscope dismissed all of my previous knowledge.
How was it possible that this wing could beat 500 times per second?
I decided to replicate this wing,
and by doing so I invented my own version of it.
This is it.
Thin, cleaved, perforated, and without the typical aerodynamic surface.
This blade is similar to the wing of the common fly.
In order to understand the scientific and practical importance of such a wing,
we must refer to the fact
that flight occurs as a result of
a difference between the bottom and top of the wing's surface
The high speed of airflow along the top of the wing means the pressure is lower and,
since nature does not allow the presence of a vacuum, this produces a lift.
A propeller can be considered
a rotating wing to which the same laws of airflow apply.
However,
the output of a standard aviation propeller has not exceed 76%
since it was invented by the Wright Brothers over 100 years ago in 1903.
By means of this wing
that is perforated -
each perforation takes up the role of the mouth, thus increasing velocity,
and the cleaved portion can be thought of as an extended perforation -
through using such a blade, I successfully built a fan with an output of 82%
while reaching the same airflow velocity, yet with less revolutions per minute.
This model can be used in constructing jet plane engines,
airplane and ship propellers , and even submarines propellers.
When it is used in underwater propellers, it produces no bubbles.
This means there is no "cavitation".
It also means that the propeller is silent,
and it would not be detected by sonar devices when used underwater.
The implications of such an invention in wind energy technology
is that we have a blade
that does not need high velocity winds to rotate this swiftly.
You can see here a rope that is hanging which I have used to demonstrate
that the wind velocity here is no more than 2 meters per second roughly.
This is an achievement that is considered a first in the world today
because the current wind turbines
need wind velocities of at least 9 meters per second to operate.
The fly has taught me
that the force of nature is hidden in the details.
We must not ignore such details,
as it is these details that can truly help us to one day change the world.
Thank you