Photograph by Jason Edwards, National Geographic
The bumps on a humpback whale's flipper, seen here in a mating ritual, are on the "wrong" side. Physicists are familiar with bumps on the trailing edges of wings or fins, but here they are found on the leading edge.
That led Dr. Frank E. Fish, a biologist at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, to try to design a fan blade that moved air as efficiently as a whale's flippers move the animal through water. The result was WhalePower, a Toronto-based company that designs blades for fans, turbines, and more, inspired by a whale's bumps.
On a whale, the bumps help it move effortlessly through the water at much steeper angles than it would otherwise. A Harvard study found that the angle of attack (the angle between the flipper and the direction of water flow) of a humpback whale flipper can be up to 40 percent steeper than a smooth flipper, giving the whale more control.
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