Spotlight

Leif Ristroph is a graduate student with the Itai Cohen Group on Complex Matter Physics. He studies bio-locomotion—how animals move and in particular how they interact with a complex fluid flow. He uses a camera that can capture images at 100,000 frames/second, and his test subjects are fruit flies, wasps, and other insects. What is it about an insect's wing that allows insects to be so maneuverable? Because insect wings are flexible, the physics of insect flight is very complex—the ...
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