Tag: i will rb all post with the scream friends

sciencenewsforstudents:

Cicadas are great at clinging to tree trunks and making loud screeching sounds by vibrating their bodies. But these bulky, red-eyed insects aren’t so great at flying. The reason why may lie in the chemistry of their wings, a new study shows.

One of the researchers behind this new finding was high-school student John Gullion. Watching cicadas on trees in his backyard, he noticed that the insects didn’t fly much. And when they did, they often bumped into things. John wondered why these fliers were so clumsy.  

“I thought maybe there was something about the structure of the wing that could help explain it,” says John. Luckily, he knew a scientist who could help him explore this idea — his dad, Terry.

Terry Gullion is a physical chemist at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Physical chemists study how a material’s chemical building blocks affect its physical properties. These are “things like a material’s stiffness or flexibility,” he explains.

Together, the Gullions studied the chemical components of a cicada’s wing. Some of the molecules they found there may affect wing structure, they say. And that might explain how the insects fly.