Align the Stars

Aeronautics: "sailing the air"

Whenever I mention the term aeronautical engineering, there's normally someone who doesn't know what exactly I mean by that phrase. Until a few years ago, I didn't know what it was either. There are some majors that are well-known; there are some that aren't, and aeronautical engineering (I'll probably shorten it to "aero" at some points in the rest of this post) falls into the latter category. Marine biology? Chemistry? Pre-med? Even when I was young, I knew what all of these majors were, although my definitions as an elementary school kid were something along the lines of "person who looks at cool things in the ocean," "person who gets to make things explode", and "person who makes a lot of money for jabbing me with a needle." But aeronautical engineer? For the longest time, I didn't know what that was.

Aeronautical engineering and its counterpart astronautical engineering are the two concentrations of the broader term aerospace engineering. While astronautical engineering focuses on the aircraft that operate outside the atmosphere, aeronautical engineering focuses on aircraft that fly within the atmosphere - airliners like the 747, military planes like the F18, helicopters, etc. Aero engineers design, construct, and analyze the structure of airplanes. They also study the forces that act on airplanes, especially aerodynamics (which I'll describe in detail later in this post). Aero engineers (sorry this is such a long name that I have to keep repeating...) work on the outside of an airplane - the wings, the fuselage, the landing gear, the propeller, the fans of a jet engine.

Aerodynamics, defined as the flow over air around objects, is one of the most vital aspects of aeronautical engineering. Without aerodynamics, there wouldn't be any lift, and without lift a plane wouldn't fly. Aerodynamics also contributes to some of the most interesting phenomena that occurs when air passes over a plane's wings, such as the vortices in the clouds in that image on the right. In the most basic sense, a vortex is caused because the air pressure on top of a wing is  lower than on the bottom of the wing. After the air passes over the plane, the higher pressure air moves around the wingtip and into the lower-pressure region; this creates the vortex.

(While I'm on the topic of aerodynamics, I just want to clear up a common misconception about an aircraft's flight. Many people believe that lift is caused because the air going over the top of a wing must go faster than the air on the bottom so that the two halves of the moving air can meet up, and therefore by Bernoulli's law the pressure on top of the wing is less than on bottom, and this creates lift. But if you think about it, there's really no reason for the air to have to meet up, and in fact it never does. The force of lift is actually defined by the equation L = ½ pv²C_L where L signifies lift, p represents... well, I know that this is probably much more interesting to me than it is to most of you, so I'll leave it to you to research more if you're interested.)

I'd originally planned to talk about how I became interested in aerodynamics and my dream careers, but I've probably bored you enough already with talk about something that probably doesn't interest the majority of you, so I'll leave that for my next post. In the meantime, here's a poem I wrote recently:

Align the Stars

I want to move the stars, shift them, align them just right
so they reflect the hope pooling deep in my heart.
I want to change them until the past dissolves to nothing
and the present becomes the future, a future of you and me
and an eternity of unspoken wishes that twist between us
in a beautiful symphony of dreams coming true.
I want to rip the stars from the tapestry of the sky
and show them the mistake they made by splitting us apart
at the time when we needed each other most.
But most of all I want to change the history of the world
and retie the string severed between us eons ago
and realign your stars until they match up with mine
and prove to everyone that luck never abandoned either of us
even in the dark starless nights of our pasts.

Becky Hill

Angel Come Home

Whenever people ask me what I want to do in the future, I've found that it's actually really fun to look them right in the eye, tell them straight up that I want to be an aeronautical engineer, and watch them try to decide how to respond. They always want to ask two specific questions but rarely do. First: "What exactly is aeronautical engineering?" Adults especially try to avoid this question, probably because they don't appreciate it when a teenager knows more about a topic - any topic - than they do. The second question is "Engineering? But you're a girl!" (which, I realize, is half a question and half a statement). I think any girl who wants to go into science will eventually face a sexist question like this, but those who major in engineering, math, physics, computer science, etc are questioned more than girls who prefer biology and medicine. While I'll be addressing both of those questions in upcoming blog posts, I want to answer the question that most people do ask: Why aviation?

I know there is an aspect of sexism behind it, because there are so few females in any industry traditionally considered part of a man's world. I was never raised on that philosophy, though - that men belong in mechanical careers and women belong anywhere else. When I was young, my Thomas the Tank Engine trains outnumbered my Barbies. I never had a dollhouse; instead, my sister and I shared a Tonka truck that we would cart all around the house. My parents, who are both science majors (my mom is a microbiologist and my dad is an electrical engineer), did the best they could to make sure that my childhood was as neutral as possible. My life wasn't particularly feminine or masculine. It just kind of was.

One part of that childhood was planes. My dad received his private pilot's license in 2002, when I was six years old, and my family bought a small plane two years later when I was eight. To say that my sister and I were raised on planes is a gross understatement. Half of my childhood memories happened in one small plane or another. The inside of our Mooney is smaller than the inside of a sedan, but I have literally spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in there over the past eight years.

With flying so readily available, it's really no surprise that the first career I gravitated towards was piloting. As a young girl, I wanted to be a commercial pilot or a fighter pilot in the military. It wasn't until I was 14 that I finally had my first flying lesson. It happened in a little glider several thousand feet above Hollister several months after my birthday, and I loved the thrill that it gave me. However, I quickly realized that while I still plan to earn my pilot's license before I graduate from high school, piloting as a career just isn't for me.

Aeronautical engineering is, though. The first time someone told me that I could combine airplanes and science and make a career out of it, I thought he was kidding. Two of my favorite things combined into one? It seemed too good to be true.

Now that I've done some research, however, I know that it's not as unbelievable as it seems. It's actually stunningly within reach, and I've already taken some steps to get there - including taking as many math and science courses as I can, participating in an aviation camp last summer, and planning to apply for several internships this summer. My dad keeps telling me that just because aviation is a major part of my family doesn't mean I have to make it my life - but I think he's finally beginning to understand that I'm not going into an aviation-related career because I want to please him. I'm doing it because I can't imagine aviation not being a part of my life. I'm doing it because I can't wait to take the next step in my journey to becoming an aeronautical engineer.



On the topic of flight, here's a 100-word flash fiction story I wrote recently:

Angel Come Home
          She went missing exactly a year ago, in June. Took off in that little airplane of hers and was never seen again. Charlie Bravo, that’s what the CB in her end number N231CB is supposed to stand for. We say it means Come Back. Come back, Kit, come home.
          She left us last year. And now, at the airport, we hear the hum. Loud, mechanical, impossible, the hum of a special airplane's engine.
          Too perfect. Too much to hope.
          And yet there it is, taxiing toward us: N231CB. A metal angel. Because Charlie Bravo has come back. Kit's come home.

Becky Hill