Marty and I are driving on the highway, and it’s motorcycle weekend in Austin — not only did we have the Pride Parade but also the Republic of Texas Biker Rally, so there were all kinds of fun people heading downtown Friday and Saturday. So we’re going and chatting aimlessly and suddenly I point, and yell, “Look! That’s the Bernoulli Effect!!”
I was so excited.
I tell you truly that I had not encountered the Bernoulli principle in research or explanation until my second session with John, when he detailed the exact movements of the vocal folds and why, exactly, they moved that way. And though in their awesome complexity the vocal folds do a sort of double Bernoulli — being sucked against each other as the air flows over them — the motorcycle dude that I saw with his shirt flying up in the back, that was your usual run-of-the-mill single Bernoulli, where the rushing air displaces the molecules on the surface of his shirt, creating a vacuum that sucks his shirt up into the air!
Oh, the things I discover on I-35, going downtown for groceries. Whee!
PS. Marty said Bernoulli sounded like a pasta. I think he’s right. But no offense to Bernoulli.
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