Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For our science project, our group chose the terrible, nerdy topic of dragons. Our official question is: Can physics/chemistry testify to the possibility of the existence of dragons? So, for the physics part, we need to find what size, and possibly type, of wings would be necessary to support the weight of the creature. (We're going off the Western take on dragons, with wings and fire-breathing)
We're required to ask an expert, so if we could get help with wings and weight and how those go together, that'd be great.

Hi,

Your group has certainly chosen a creative topic. I don’t know if a definitive answer exists on how large an animal can be and still fly, but people have certainly tried to answer the question. Here are a few interesting resources to explore:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... enter.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_and_gliding_animals

http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/mcguire/annurev.ecolsys.pdf

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6881.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Flying_and_gliding_animals

http://www.springerlink.com/content/261387p817538588/

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... ysics.html

I hope this gets you into the subject. Have fun with it!

Best regards,

Barrett L Tomlinson

Legendary aerodynamicist Paul MacCready (founder of the UAV/aeronautics company Aerovironment, developer of the first successful human powered
aircraft, among other things), developed a remote control flying dinosaur.

http://books.google.com/books?id=vmYEAA ... dy&f=false

There's plenty of other information about this project that you can find if you do a web search on "Paul MacCready, flying dinosaur". Dinosaurs, after all, are
close cousins to dragons