Word: updraft
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Since a condor's wings are too large for much flapping, it soars skyward by jumping from its mountaintop nest into an updraft. On the ground, the birds need a spiraling thermal air current to take off. Says the Los Angeles Zoo's Michael Wallace: "I've seen Andean condors walk half a mile for a launch point...
...positions athletes take while competing often look mystifyingly ungainly, but there are usually practical reasons. Aerodynamic considerations have led ski jumpers to hold their arms at their sides to form an airfoil, getting as much updraft as possible after takeoff from the slope. Downhill racers crouch with their chests to their knees, assuming a near fetal position to cut wind resistance. In luge, sliders lying on their backs and steering with their feet minimize resistance by keeping their limbs aligned and body flat...
...Ocean, building up ferocious tides. Generally born during the hottest time of the year (which around the Bay of Bengal is in the spring or fall), a storm system begins to build as heated, moist air is sucked north into the bay. The hot-air mass rises, creating an updraft. When the air inside the system cools, its moisture condenses into rain, releasing heat, which in turn sends more hot air upward with ever greater velocity...
...haplessly back to the ground. Five more times it tried to fly. On its seventh attempt it was able to get enough lift to make one complete turn before landing again. Finally, on the eighth, it began to rise, climbing in gently looping circles, like a hawk riding an updraft of warm air, to an altitude of about 250 ft. "O.K., you guys," radioed Pilot Stephen Ptacek, 28, to a control team on the ground. "I suggest you get the cars ready to leave...
...perhaps $2 billion in increased revenues that the company is expected to earn as the project's overseer and prime contractor comes at a time when the firm is already in an updraft of high-flying riches. From $5.5 billion in 1978, Boeing's sales climbed 49% in 1979 to a stunning $8.1 billion. Profits rose proportionately even more, to $505 million, an increase of 57% over the previous year. In the past two weeks alone Boeing has sold $1 billion worth of planes to airlines as diverse as Ansett in Australia, Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong...