Words: Fly .. Flew, Flow, Flaw ..
Words - how they relate to each other, to the world around us, and how they symbolize a thing, a motion, and often a culture and stream of history. Just feeling a bit poesy today.
Fly. This can mean the class of insects including the fruit fly, the common housefly, the horse fly, blue bottle fly, etc. I was reading “Plan B”. Anthora (the dramliza or wizard) reached out, and the comb lying three feet away flew to her hand. Flew. Plan B is the ‘culmination’ of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s sequence of novels beginning with “Agent of Change”.
But fly. For Anthor, “Fly” meant ‘traverse the distance through the air or space, unsupported by material object.” In other usage we mean fly in the airplane sense - the peculiar shape of an aircraft member that forces air to pass under in a straight manner with little turbulence, at the same time causing air immediately above the member or ‘wing’ to move in a significantly longer path, necessarily causing the air above the wing to move faster. And produce a reduction of air ‘pressure’. Or ‘lift’, as we say. The difference in air speed below and above the wing cause a difference in pressure that lifts the wing with respect to the direction of air flow (usually parallel to the ground, or ‘up’). We look at the propeller on an airplane, and see that it drags the craft forward, depending on the wing to lift the craft off the ground. Then we look at a helicopter with it’s great blades, and think of them as a form of propeller. Only the helicopter blade isn’t flat like a propeller might be. A helicopter blade is a form of wing, creating lift, which is why helicopters are properly called ‘rotary winged aircraft’.
In one way, I see an airplane wing, interacting with the air, as a material support, so I might find a discussion of whether airplanes really fly, in the semantic sense, to be interesting. Throw a baseball, and air or no air flow, the ball proceeds until it stops. A bullet once fired, an arrow released at the bow, move from here to there irrespective of the nature of the environment - whether air or water or the high energy, low pressure of space in the solar system, or the true emptiness of inter-galactic void (I would guess).
Back to fly. Today I fly, yesterday I flew. When we describe air movement about the wing we talk of flow. Flow is a procession of media or objects. We speak of turbulence and eddies to describe disturbances of flow. We used valves to control flow in and out of pipes. Air flows above and below the wing, the longer path and higher speed above the wing creates lift. The wing is designed to create as little disturbance or turbulence as possible, for simple flight. For special reasons, a certain amount of turbulence is created, such as for low speed flight during takeoff and landing, or to cause the aircraft to turn (flaps and ailerons). Flow, Flew.
Flaw. Unwanted turbulence in flow, a defect, a part that has been worn or stressed beyond normal usage to cause an item to be less than it should be. A cut power cord, a nick or mar on furniture or wall.
Flux. The word that gave us today’s ‘flu’. A description of change over a period of time. The global climate is in flux (apparently always has been, I don’t see all the panic about it changing now..). Also apparently a historical novel reference to diarrhea, a common flu symptom. Flux
Flame, flare, flew, flow, flaw, flux. Fly.
Have a nice FL day!