Bee Movie has quite the cult following. There are a lot of YouTube videos about it, like “The Bee Movie: But Every Time They Say Bee, It Speeds Up.” ” Someone loves the film so much that they watched it on Netflix 357 times in 2017. Advertisement.
Its a nice idea, but in reality bees do not disobey any laws of physics. If they did, bees would be responsible for ripping apart time and space whenever they flew around. Advertisement.
A French entomologist named August Magnan said in the 1930s that bees shouldn’t be able to fly because their wings flap around in a random way. This is where the myth comes from. And if bees flew like aeroplanes, he would be correct.
Aeroplanes can fly because of a careful balance of four physical forces: lift, drag, weight, and thrust. The lift force must balance its weight, and thrust must exceed its drag, to make flying possible. Planes use wings for lift and engines for thrust. Drag is reduced thanks to a streamlined shape, and lightweight materials.
Plane wings are long enough to meet the lift equations for flight, so they don’t need to flap. But the small wings of a bee compared to its relatively fat body are not. A normal Boeing 747 plane can also take off at about 184 mph, but bees can’t get even close to that speed. Advertisement.
Bees flap their wings a lot, which makes them move slowly. This makes it look like they shouldn’t be able to fly. In reality, they simply fly in a completely different way.
One study from 2005 helped explain the way bees get themselves off the ground. Researchers looked at fruit flies and bees side by side and found that fruit flies are eighty times smaller than bees and flap their wings 200 times per second. In comparison, honeybees flap 230 times per second.
This surprised me because smaller bugs usually have to flap their wings faster to make up for their poorer aerodynamics. To make things even more difficult, bees often carry pollen and nectar, which can weigh as much as their whole bodies. Advertisement.
For the study, oxygen and helium, which is less dense than regular air, were put in a small room with bees. The bees had to work harder to stay in the air, which let the team see how they made up for it.
They saw that the bees stretched out their wing stroke amplitude, but didnt adjust the frequency.
“They work like racing cars,” one of the authors of the study, Douglas Altshuler, told Live Science. “Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient. ” Advertisement.
This was also found by Michael Dickinson, a biology professor at the University of Washington, in a study from 2005. Bees flap their wings back and forth, not up and down. People used to think this about the way insects fly, and it could have been what caught Magnan off guard in the first place.
An aeroplanes wing forces air down, which pushes the plane upwards. Insects sweep their wings in a partial spin. The angle to the wing doesn’t work like a propeller; instead, it makes air swirl like small hurricanes. The eyes of these mini-hurricanes have a lower pressure than the air outside, which lifts the bees upwards.
So the next time someone says that a bee shouldn’t be able to fly, you should tell them that this is just a myth spread by pop culture. In reality, bees just make small hurricanes everywhere they go, which is much easier to understand.
The notion that “bees should not be able to fly” is an enduring myth that has captured the public imagination for over a century. But where did this idea come from and is there any truth to it? Let’s take a closer look at the science behind bee flight and the origins of this captivating quote.
A Biological Impossibility? The Question of Bee Flight
The essence of the “bee flight myth” is that basic aerodynamic principles indicate bees should not able to achieve flight with their tiny wings and relatively large bodies. The story goes that an aeronautical engineer did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and determined that bees violate the laws of physics by flying.
This myth is often attributed to quotes by prominent early 20th century engineers like Ludwig Prandtl or Jakob Ackeret. One version cites French entomologist Antoine Magnan who wrote in 1934, “I applied the laws of air resistance to insects and arrived at the conclusion that their flight is impossible.”
So are bees really breaking the laws of physics every time they take to the air? Absolutely not. In fact, the “impossibility” of bee flight says more about gaps in human scientific understanding than any shortcomings of bee anatomy.
Unraveling the Mystery of Bee Flight
Bee flight has puzzled many researchers over the years. But just because scientists couldn’t fully explain bee aerodynamics did not mean bees were physically incapable of flying. After all, anyone can plainly see bees in flight!
The key breakthrough came when researchers realized bee wings are not rigid or still. They move rapidly twisting and rotating in figure-eight patterns to generate lift. Tiny vortices and areas of low pressure provide additional aerodynamic lift. So although their wings are small relative to their bodies they beat those wings up to 230 times per second, enabling flight.
Modern high-speed videography and simulations have enabled far greater understanding of the precise wing motions and air currents that give bees the ability to fly. But it was technological limitations not violations of physics that temporarily made bee flight so mysterious.
Tracing the Origin of the Legend
The notion that “bees can’t fly” likely goes back to the 1930s or earlier. But the first direct quote expressing this sentiment can be traced to 1934 remarks by Antoine Magnan who wrote “I arrived…at the conclusion that their flight is impossible.”
Magnan was specifically referring to understanding insect aerodynamics. The quote does not mean Magnan believed insect flight was literally impossible, just that he was struggling to model it mathematically.
The quote likely mutated over retellings, morphing from an admission of inadequate theoretical models into a claim that bees break physics. Early versions named Ludwig Prandtl or Jakob Ackeret as the source before Magnan was identified.
The Modern Legacy: From Academic Lore to Pop Culture
The misinterpreted Magnan quote gradually transformed from an obscure academic anecdote into one of the most widespread urban legends in pop science.
By the 1980s, the “bees shouldn’t be able to fly” myth was routinely shared as scientific cocktail party banter. It came to symbolize the counterintuitive mysteries of physics.
The quote gained mainstream fame through the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld. It then reached an even wider audience via the 2007 animated film Bee Movie, which opens with the line: “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly.”
While scientifically inaccurate, the resilient myth serves as a reminder that nature is often more complex than our models. The bee flight conundrum has also become shorthand for how scientific progress transcends perceived limitations.
The claim that bees defy aerodynamics to achieve flight makes for a fascinating story. But it is just that – a compelling story, not scientific fact. Nevertheless, the myth has become indelibly ingrained in popular culture.
Through mangled retellings, a quote about early struggles to explain bee flight became a widespread falsehood that bees break the laws of physics. While the legend is catchy and humorous, it propagates misleading ideas about science.
Ultimately, the myth of bees’ “impossible” flight reveals more about human fallibility in modeling nature than any shortcomings of bees. With technological advances, the puzzle of bee aerodynamics has largely been solved, even if the cultural lore lives on.
According to all known laws of aviation – BEE MOVIE INTRO
FAQ
What is the bees quote from bee movie?
What is a quote about bees?
What is the theory of the bumblebee flying?
What does it mean if a bee is not flying?
Should bees be able to fly according to the laws of Physics?
Whether from a friend or even from Bee Movie, you may have heard of the idea that bees shouldn’t be able to fly according to the laws of physics. “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground,” the opening of Bee Movie says.
Can a bee fly?
Quote by Bee Movie: “According to all known laws of aviation, there ” (?) “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”
What is a quote from the ‘Bee Movie’ Movie?
Don’t let people miss on a great quote from the “Bee Movie” movie – add it here! A great memorable quote from the Bee Movie movie on Quotes.net – Narrator: [first lines] According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. It’s wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.
Did a mathematician say bees can’t fly?
So, around 80 years ago a scientists or mathematician of some sort made a rough, mistake filled calculation that claimed bees couldn’t fly.
Why do bees flies?
“The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.” The writers of the movie were likely referencing a much older myth, possibly dating back to the 1930s. The story goes that, one night, an aerodynamicist was talking to a biologist, who took the opportunity to ask about the flight of bees.
Did bees fly 230 times a second?
For a time, scientists couldn’t exactly figure out how bees flew, even though they beat their wings 230 times a second, but this was partly down to the assumption that their small wings were rigid. “Understanding bee wings was key to figuring out how bees could fly.