How Birds Fly

How Birds fly - tinker crate inspires learning

The other day my son made a model bird from one of his Tinker Crates. He was quite impressed with it and explained to me how it shows how a birds’ wing moves in flight.

This of course, inspired us to look up more information. Part of our research led us to this video.

I have to admit, it’s kinda interesting to think about isn’t it? How God designed birds so they automatically handle high and low pressure to their best advantage? It is not something I have ever thought of before but when he was talking about how the feathers open up for the backstroke I thought …yea.. they do. Now I know what effect that has for them.

How do birds fly?

Birds use four physical aspects to help themselves fly.

Weight, thrust, drag and lift. Their hollow bones make it easier to get into the air. Their interlocking barbules on their feathers help give them lift as they flap. Drag helps them come back to earth as does thrusting backwards with their wings. The video below gives a glimpse into how that works.

The 3D model my son put together doesn’t show all the intricacies of how a birds wing work (that would be rather difficult to build much less ship in a box) but it showed some of the actions necessary for a bird to fly. Yay to Tinker Crates for opening up my son’s eyes to how a bird flies.