Re: [Phys-L] Falling parallelograms (was: wondering about stuff)

["W. Trevor King" <wking@tremily.us>]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 05:20:55PM -0700, John Denker wrote:
> Recently there was some discussion of dropping metal squares and 
> comparing them to cardboard squares.  That motivated me to do some
> informal experiments:
>  -- I dropped a square in the broadside "pancake" orientation
>  -- I dropped a square in some other orientations.
> …

Folks interested in falling shapes might be interested in this recent
paper:

  Subject: Unsteady aerodynamic forces and torques on falling
    parallelograms in coupled tumbling-helical motions
  Author(s): Kapil Varshney, Song Chang, and Z. Jane Wang
  
  Falling parallelograms exhibit coupled motion of autogyration and
  tumbling, similar to the motion of falling tulip seeds, unlike maple
  seeds which autogyrate but do not tumble, or rectangular cards which
  tumble but do not gyrate. This coupled tumbling and autogyrating
  motion are robust, …
  
  [Phys. Rev. E 87, 053021] Published Wed May 29, 2013
  URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.053021

Cheers,
Trevor

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