Word: airfoil
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Free of the Chop. For power, Scotti had two 115-h.p. engines stacked on his stern; for a hull, he had one of the new "tunnel" designs developed by his countryman Angello Molinari. The hull consists of an airfoil-like center flanked by two pontoons. Their effect is to lift the boat out of the water and allow it to ride free of the chop on a cushion of air. In the straightaways, Scotti's black-and-yellow striped boat blasted over the waves at more than 100 m.p.h. By the 3 p.m. gun, he had averaged an incredible...
novice nun who discovers that her wing-shaped cornet, mirabile dictu, is a perfect airfoil. The show will be cut to half an hour once Sister Bertrille gets airborne...
...stops appreciatively on the massive, floating box-and-cloister of Charles Luckman's United States pavilion, and disapprovingly on Bell Telephone's flying wing, which looks more like a big hunk of sedimentary rock than an airfoil. The three-acre building that houses General Motors' Futurama ends in one gigantic tail fin, which may be good as advertising but is ridiculous as architecture. The boldest structure at the fair is Architect Philip Johnson's New York State pavilion: 16 tremendous columns support an elliptical roof of colored plastics that is larger than a football field...
Catching a Vacuum. An iceboat travels fastest across the wind-on what sailors call "a reach." Its speed results from the sail's efficiency as an airfoil -something like the wing on an airplane. Sailing directly downwind, an iceboat cannot exceed the wind's speed. On a reach, though, the wind produces a vacuum on the lee of the slightly slanting sail. This results in a strong forward force. As the sail pushes forward trying to eliminate the vacuum, an iceboat can attain fantastic speeds -up to five times the actual wind velocity. The ice sailor hauls...
...sustained free fall is an ecstatic swan dive, the jumper falling spread-eagled and belly down, his back deeply arched. A roll of the head, a dip of the hands, a hunch of the shoulders-any movement will alter his fall. The body acts as a primitive airfoil and expert sky divers use it to control the speed and direction of their plunge. Officials lying flat on their backs study and judge the falling forms through binoculars, but to most spectators the jumpers become visible only when their chutes open...