The reason, Bejan told LiveScience, has to do with something called a boundary layer.
The vortex generators themselves are pins or vanes that protrude from the surface and set up microscopic eddies in the boundary layer.
When swimmers spread their fingers just right, each individual digit forms its own boundary layer, as if it's "dressed in a sleeve of water that moves with the finger, " Bejan said.
Mizuno reckons that by reducing friction, keeping the flow orderly and delaying separation of the boundary layer, its new suits offer the average female swimmer 9.5% less drag than a conventional costume.
Before the experiment in the hanger could begin, researchers calculated the pressures the house would experience in a small-scale study conducted at the University's Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory -- which has over 40 years of expertise testing high-rise buildings and bridges.
While a single wind-turbine does not affect the global atmosphere, the installation of a large number of such devices will interfere with the atmospheric circulation and diminish the extraction efficiency on the large scale, since any extraction of momentum will act in competition with natural wind-power energy dissipation by turbulence in the boundary layer.
FORBES: Researchers Warn Of Climatic Consequences To Harvesting Wind Energy On Mass Scale
However, employing boundary-layer ingestion means the airflow into the engine is not uniform.
The rear of the fuselage is also sculpted to sweep air into the engines using a process known as boundary-layer ingestion.
The question is one of the most hotly contested in palaeontology and revolves around an apparent gap in the fossil record immediately prior to the K-T boundary - the distinct layer of geological sediments separating the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, and associated with a massive asteroid impact and global extinction event.
The eerie light probably came not from the substance itself, but from the boundary between it and the glass layer below.
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