Word: airfoil
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...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...
...most rigid part of the ship. To protect the instruments from as much motion as possible, the Compass Island is equipped with wing-shaped gyrofins, which cut down roll from 7½° to a barely perceptible .4°. Among the ship's other refinements: a giant, airfoil-shaped sonar dome beneath the keel that will measure ship's speed (and which has already earned the nickname "droop snoot...
...planes to fly faster, it was found that their life and control surfaces had to be thinner, in order to out down the drag offsets of air resistance. As these structures became thinner, it was seen that at certain speeds, they developed a noticeable flutter. When wings flutter, their airfoil shapes are distorted, and they sometimes lose all their lifting ability...