Scintific Dragons

Originally posted by daniel191159


If anyone can find any information on the mathematics behind the thrust of flapping wings (of animals) I would be very happy.

I think I found something that could help. Its about the wing of Archaeopteryx as a primary thrust generator. In the method section its got some formulas. Hope it helps

www.stephenjaygould.org...

What type of dragon body did you work with? Can you post a pic of one that looks the same.

I find it very interesting that so many widely seperated cultures have myths regarding flying serpents. There are several documented eye witness accounts of flying serpents or really snakes, as well there are myths like that of quatzecoatl, a flying serpent in ancient Mexican lore.

As outrageous as it may seem, sky serpents have been reported widely throughout time and all over the globe. I cant say anything about them breathing fire, but I will suggest that this is the same phenomenon as the dragon myths from ancient Europe...

Originally posted by William One Sac
I find it very interesting that so many widely seperated cultures have myths regarding flying serpents. There are several documented eye witness accounts of flying serpents or really snakes, as well there are myths like that of quatzecoatl, a flying serpent in ancient Mexican lore.

As outrageous as it may seem, sky serpents have been reported widely throughout time and all over the globe. I cant say anything about them breathing fire, but I will suggest that this is the same phenomenon as the dragon myths from ancient Europe...

Truth. But how many of these cultures also has myths about flying horses, people with dog heads, the sun being carried by a chariot...

If you focus on one specific myth, that of the flying serpent, then it is going to make you think "Hey, there's something to this!" But if you look at mythology as a whole, then snakes with wings are far from being unique in terms of weird animals. Humans have very active imaginations.

[quote[Esoterica
As I said, humans have a natural revulsion towards reptile, especially snakes.
I have to disagree with you there, I for just one have no problems with snakes, reptiles, spiders....I have them as pets. Also...it could be possible to have a creature with some sort of "something" from it's mouth. We have creatures now that spew poisonous fluids, fish too...

I am not trying to plug this site, however here is some research I uncovered a year or so ago about eyewitnesses seeing flying snakes in the air. I know it sounds crazy, and maybe they were high on corn whiskey, but these accounts really struck me. Assuming that the people were not lying, it is very hard to say that they would misidentify something as obvious looking as a snake. Anyhow my opinion is not the final say on the matter, I am just contributing to the train of thoughts on this.

www.subversiveelement.com...


EDIT Spelling

[edit on 11-8-2004 by William One Sac]

Originally posted by LadyV
I have to disagree with you there, I for just one have no problems with snakes, reptiles, spiders....I have them as pets. Also...it could be possible to have a creature with some sort of "something" from it's mouth. We have creatures now that spew poisonous fluids, fish too...

Well, when one says 'humans', he doesn't mean each and every one, as you said. I mean, humans have a natural drive to reproduce. This does not mean there are not certain individuals lack that drive. Distinguish between humans the species and humans the individuals.

Here's that has a general overview of it.

[edit on 11-8-2004 by Esoterica]

Originally posted by daniel191159

During my senior year in high school I had a fascination with flight. I found a picture of a dragon and a small figurine that mirrored it in every way that was important. I calculated its mass, wing span, the surface area of its wings, running speed based on muscle and skeletal structure, drag due to surface area, and lift generated by running with wings outstreached. After about three months of research, checking, double checking and recalculating I determined that the particular specie I was studying could, in fact, glide had it existed. The lift it could generate was enough for it to carry approximately 50 lbs before it would not generate sufficient lift to become airborn.

You wouldn't happen to have any of those workings still would you? I'm quite intrieged

Some useful maths at Mathematical Power requirements for flight

Also I found:

"Flying

The key to wings is surface-volume ratio. Body mass and volume increase as the cube of size, so that an adult rabbit 10 times as long as a newborn will weight 10x10x10 or 1000 times as much. On the other hand, bone strength increases as the cross-sectional area of the bone, or as the square of size. Thus, an elephant 10 times as tall as a dog will have 1000 times the body mass, and need 1000 times as much bone strength. Its bones will have to be 31.6 times as big in diameter as the dog�s (31.6 x 31.6 = 1000). Thus the elephant�s bones will be much thicker in proportion to their length than the dog�s. Conversely, a mouse 1/10 as large as the dog has to support only 1/1000 as much mass and needs only 1/1000 as much bone strength, so mouse bones are much thinner than dog bones in proportion to their size. Bone proportion is why a snapping mousetrap is painful for a human but fatal for a mouse. A dog, a mouse, and an elephant all scaled to the same size would look quite different and it would be immediately obvious which is which.

If we apply these scaling laws to humans, an adult three times the size of a baby would weigh 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 times as much. A typical baby is about 55 cm (22 inches) long, an adult 165 cm (67 inches) tall. If the baby weighs 3 kg (6.6 pounds) we'd expect the adult to weigh 81 kg (178 pounds). That's a bit on the heavy side for a 165-cm human, because babies are chunkier than adults. That's partly why they're cute.

Now, air resistance is related to surface area and varies as the square of size. Objects falling through the air eventually reach a terminal velocity (for skydivers it is about 200 km/hr.) As organisms get smaller, their mass goes down as the cube of their size but air resistance as the square. Thus, a rat 1/10 as big as a human has 1/1000 the mass, but 1/100 the air resistance. In other words, in proportion to its size, a rat encounters ten times as much air resistance. Small organisms encounter such large air resistance that they can easily survive a fall that would kill a human.

Surface-volume ratio explains why flying birds cannot be very large. Mass goes up as the cube of size, but lift, which is related to wing area, goes up only as the square of size. So does bone strength to support the wings and muscle cross-section to power them. So a big bird compensates for its large body mass with larger wings, thicker bones, and thicker muscles, and a much greater tendency to glide. Big birds like condors with 4-meter wing spans are near the limit of size for birds, and they have far larger wing spans in proportion to their size than sparrows. During the Mesozoic there were flying reptiles with bigger wing spans. We have complete fossils of flying reptiles with 7-meter wing spans and partial fossils of creatures that may have had wing spans of 15 meters or more. We�re not sure how much powered flight capability they had, or whether they were solely gliders, and the bodies that have been found are about the size of the largest flying birds today. They could surely not have carried off a human, as the flying reptiles of Jurassic Park III or Dinotopia did."

From here

Meh, I've got a lecture in Cosmology now, but I'll try to find some more useful sites and do the math later Have a good day people!

[edit on 8/11/2004 by Slashpepper]

[edit on 8/11/2004 by Slashpepper]

As far as I know there are no remains of dragons discovered. Or am I wrong here? Which is the reason I do not believe they excisted.

Suppose they did excist then I think they could have been able to breath fire. It could have been some chemical reaction with their spit coming in the air or so. Some snakes their poison is also a mix of some things I read once so doesn�t seem to me it could not have been possible with dragons.

Flying. Since dragons are always,or mostly, told to be big and so I highly doubt they could have been able to fly. That would ,like others also said, burn so much energy they would have to feed constantly.. so no.

And then the nr3. If they did excist, why do we not find them? Maybe their bones where of another structure or something? Don�t know. But it is rather curious that there have been sightings and so and that we have documents about them . Do we have documents or cavedrawings or anything from before let�s say anno domini 1000? Because mostly the info we have comes from after. So maybe the church invented it or so?

Yeah, I'd say Komodo dragons are a fair bet, theres a lot of myths surrpounding them in the tribe that live in their area (Islands off Indonesia), they're the biggest living reptile. Damn cool too.

Originally posted by Slashpepper

You wouldn't happen to have any of those workings still would you? I'm quite intrieged

I am trying to scroung up my old research. When I find it all (I found bits and pieces) I will send it to you.

I'm surprised but pleased that I got such a good mixture of results in such a short time, I'm supposing that dragons were not huge but maybe twice the size of a doberman, I hope that more people post there thoughts.

Here is an interesting site on dragons
www.anzwers.org...

I have heard of a Russian man still barely alive that has seen a dragon and written about it. I will try to find the link. I believe he saw it when he was very young and they had it in a traveling show or something.

Other Dragon sites
www.colba.net...

Though this is interesting we have no proof. Someone told me that the government once tracked the flight or migration of dragons and that it is documented, but called something unusual. I have never heard of this before not found evidence of this. Has anyone else heard that?

After the recent dragon documentarie on the Animal planet network, and all the latest talk of dragons, I'd like to get some more peoples comments, ideas and suggestions.


Monstra mihi pecuniam!
Iori

slashpepper
They're not the biggest living reptile, that title would go to the anaconda by weight and length. They (Komodo) are the biggest living lizard.

The chemical theory is sound, there are any number of elemental substances and various mixtures that would produce a flame effect on contact with the air, or, two separate chemicals when combined in dual streams could produce the same effect. Both the above mentioned methods would be safe for storage, but since I imagine they would be salt based, I'm guessing maybe the dragons lived underground and drank water running off of stalagtites, or perhaps they simply ate the salt spires.

I don't know if dragons existed or not, but flying dragons would have been incredibly unlikely.

The more likely scenario involves acid spitting reptiles ("it burned like fire") or flame spitting reptiles, probably land based. The animal could be created relatively easily in the imagination, but creating one and selecting it in nature would be difficult. There are more efficient methods of capturing prey besides expending the energy to breathe fire, and there are more efficient methods of dissuading predators. Then again, who's to say they even had predators, so what would the use have been? I think that's been mentioned by another poster already...

I wrote a story once about an abandoned laboratory on an ash world, a xenobiologist discovers the charred remains of a note book and as he is reading more and more about the fascinating adaptations of the local fauna, including flaming gouts from their mouths, the dragons eyes shine from the darkness and flames curl from their lips (the chemical was air volatile, and their lips, digestive tracts, and mouths were heavy in minerals, hard to burn. End of story.

Anyway, I think it's possible, but I don't think this planet has seen dragons so far. Maybe some time in the future.

Kudos for the idea that the volatile chemicals may explain the lack of fossil evidence, I hadn't thought of that.

Still, I think the Dragon had its birthplace in the minds of men, and that's likely the only place it's ever existed.

Behold, megalania prisca!


Cool huh? A predecessor/cousin of the Komodo that preyed on primitive man is Asia. I think it grew to about 6 meters.

[edit on 30-3-2005 by WyrdeOne]

Okay...

Before you get your hopes up...

It's a fake. There's a company that produces designer fossils for its clients, you tell them what you want and they create it for you. They have klingon fish on their website, sea dragons, "The Tunanator" and several other wacky creations. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me...



Thought y'all might enjoy this pic.

www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...

Try this link it is for the bombardier beetle. It shoots burning chemials from its rear end. Really!

So maybe T-Rex could have too? It was called the empty headed dragon, as it has huge cavities for storing something besides brains in its head, maybe chemicals?

45,000 people saw St. Geroge kill the Dragon in 300a.d., it breath was reported deadly. It lived under water. This thing was so mean, the whole city could not kill it, so they would feed it childern too keep it happy.

T Rex had enlarged olfactory glands that took up a great portion of its cranium. Just like a vulture, it relied primarily on carrion to fulfill its energy requirements.

That bit about T Rex being a scavenger is relatively new, maybe a couple years old.

Good point on the bombardier beetle, but remember, that's just a caustic solution - not quite as impressive as fire breath. (But probably just as effective)

And 45k people saw George slay the dragon? Based on what?

There certainly aren't 45k different authors with books on the subject. There wasn't a petition to sign to verify the event.

Someone else wrote that 45k people saw the event, and you believed it. Right?