Question

Justify that flight of birds is an example of composition of vectors.

Answer 1

Hint: Force is a vector quantity and cannot be added or subtracted using ordinary laws of algebra. There are two laws for adding the vectors which are used extensively. These are Triangles law of vector addition and parallelogram’s law of vector addition.

Complete step by step answer: The flight of a can be visualized as a composition of vectors. When the bird moves through the air, the air hits the wings of a bird. If the bird moves in forward direction, the wind hits in the opposite direction, the air acts as a resistance to the motion of the bird.

Here we have represented the semi-circle to portray the spreaded wings of a bird.
The reaction forces must be there in accordance with Newton’s third law and they are OA & OB. Now, we need to add these two vectors, we see the tail of one vector touches the tail of another, so we use parallelogram law here.
So, OC is the resultant of OA & OB and 0C is resultant upwards force is responsible for the flight of the bird.

Additional information- The two vectors are said to be perpendicular when the angle between the vectors is $$90{}^{\circ }$$.

Note- We have used parallelogram law where the two vectors acting at a point are shown based on magnitude and direction, by the two adjacent sides of a parallelogram originated from a particular point and the obtained resultant is represented by the diagonal of the parallelogram that is drawn from the same point.