Behind writing "Fairy Troubled: a Girl Power Adventure"
Have you ever tried to make a scientific case for something
that doesn’t exist? Well I did, while writing my “Fairy Troubled: A Girl Power
Adventure”. I was trying put some
science behind a fairy’s ability to fly.
Using what I learned in high school Biology, I had made a decent case
for a fairy’s bone structure based upon an actual creature that flies, a bird.
Everything
was going well, I had my argument planned and was in the middle of writing,
when I decided I wanted to know, proportionally how much a human’s skeleton
weights. I found out that very important piece of information. (15 percent of
the total human body’s weight. Thank you ask.com (http://www.ask.com/science/much-bones-weigh-3324ed60a31144f3).)
But being the nerd I am, I also decided to look into how much a bird’s bones
weight.
Everything
I learned in high school Biology is wrong because I found a very informative
article on sciencedaily.com (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322112103.htm).
A bat researcher, Elizabeth Dumont, was comparing a bat’s skeleton to that of a
bird’s skeleton of similar size. Her finding was that a bird’s skeleton,
typically thought to be lighter because its unusual bone structure, is actually
even denser and weighs about the same amount. My science textbook taught that
bird’s skeletons are lighter.
I give
up, my scientific argument, has been destroyed. Without a lighter skeleton
there is no reason why a fairy, almost exactly the same as human would be able
to fly. How could those tiny wings ever produce enough lift to get them flying?
I don’t know.
