Saturday 2 August 2014

The Red Arrows v a Hummingbird

The Red Arrows are amazing. I enjoyed watching them at the Farnborough Air Show again recently . I have also enjoyed watching hummingbirds this summer whilst on holiday visiting my family. I wondered how they compared in flight? I discovered:  Hawk aircraft can fly upside down, straight up and forwards; a hummingbird can do that and fly backwards; a Hawk jet can fly at 600mph, the Hummingbird is the fastest bird for its size flying at 60 mph; a Hawk jet costs £20m, a hummingbird nothing; the Hawk has a 3 metre long Rolls Royce engine, the hummingbird is 7cm long and beats its wings 200x a second; there have been 34 types of Hawk, there are 250 species of hummingbird, a Hawk has fixed colour (mainly red and white) the hummingbird has many colours and is iridescent - it can change colour (with 940 feathers); the hummingbird also has 250 breaths per minute and 250 heart beats per minute. Wow.

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