LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Kites: Winds
built 632 days ago
In 1833, a British meteorologist, E. D. Archibold, started using kites to lift anemometers to measure wind speed at various altitudes. Meteorological observatories around the world used kites to lift instruments thousands of feet into the air. This gave a great deal of information about the atmosphere, and vastly improved the weather forecasting of the time. Kites were to continue in this role until the mid 1930s, when aircraft and radiosonde balloons finally replaced them. In 1887, Archibold was the first person to take an aerial photograph from a kite, an application that is still practised today. Kites have been used as a cheap alternative method of obtaining aerial photographs of archeological sites, reefs, and the remains of shipwrecks.
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Each of the kites on this slide looks different than another kite, but the forces acting on all the kites is exactly the same. In fact, with the exception of thrust, the forces acting on a kite are ... the same forces which act on an airliner or a fighter plane. Like an aircraft, kites are heavier than air and rely on aerodynamic forces to fly. Gas balloons and bubbles, on the other hand, are lighter than air and rely on buoyancy forces to fly. Like an aircraft, kites have a solid frame normally made of wood or plastic, and this frame is covered by a paper, plastic, or cloth "skin" to generate the lift necessary to overcome the kite's weight. A kite must be made as light as possible for good performance, yet be strong enough to withstand high winds.
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Can a classroom of twenty students make twenty kites, and be outside flying them in twenty minutes? You betcha! Uncle Jonathan from the Big Wind Kite Factory on the Hawaiian island of Molokai shares the kid-tested instructions he's been using with tour groups for fifteen years. The kites are folded from 8 « x 11 inch paper, so they are smaller than the usual kite, but the simple directions are easy enough for kindergartners, yet fun enough for big kids too!
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Most kites fly at angle of less than 50 degrees above the horizon. Efficient kites normally fly at angles of up to 70 degrees. The reason Hargrave's gliding kites flew so well was due to the shape of the wing he developed. It was shaped very much like the cross section of a modern aeroplane wing, with a slight reflex curve at the trailing edge, producing enough just enough drag to stop the kite falling forwards into the wind.
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Did you know that E. D. Archibold, a British meteorologist, was the first person to try flying kites to take aloft anemometers to measure wind speeds at various height? He did it in 1833. Read More
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Some of Hargrave's later "gliding kites" were so efficient that they flew at angles of up to 110 degrees. The kite could well be further into the wind than its tether point, which caused a problem if the wind dropped. Hargrave solved this problem by flying this style of kite from a trapeze-like structure, which prevented the kite from reaching the ground if the wind did ease at all.
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