Princess Twilight Sparkle's Private Library · 10:44pm Mar 2nd, 2021
Rarity coughed politely. “Pardon me, Twilight, but I’m not entirely certain I followed all of that. You say this device flies without needing magic, is that correct?”
“That’s right,” said Twilight proudly. The two of them were standing at the base of a contraption made of wood, paper and canvas.
“Meaning it can be piloted by any pony at all, not simply a unicorn?”
“Absolutely! Even Spike could fly it.” Spike looked up in alarm from the flight checklist he was inspecting.
“I assume, therefore,” continued Rarity, “that you charged up the magic in advance – perhaps in some crystals hidden inside the body there?”
Twilight was shaking her head. “No, that’s the incredible thing. It uses no magic at all to fly!”
“Really? Then what keeps it from, you know…” - she gestured a falling stone - “dropping?” Her hoof hit the wet grass.
“The Bernoulli effect. The ‘aeroplane’ propels itself forward with that propeller there, and those wings moving through the air push down on the air to lift the whole thing up. At least, I think that’s how it works. Some of the maths was quite complicated.”
“I see,” said Rarity, clearly not seeing. “This Bernoulli sounds like a very clever unicorn to have come up with an idea that defeats even our Twilight. Where in Equestria did you hear about it?”
“I um...” Twilight turned away, pawing her hoof at the ground. “I read about it. In a book.”
Rarity had the feeling that Twilight was hiding something, but chose not to pry. Instead she asked, “How is the propeller able to pull the whole thing along? It looks very small to be doing all that.”
“Oh, it moves around very fast,” said Twilight, glad of the change of topic. “And the curved blades pull the air through it. The engine inside turns it. I’ll show you when I’ve finished calibrating it.”
“And what makes the engine turn?”
“Well... magic, obviously.”
“Obviously,” said Rarity, pleased to have gotten to the root of the matter.
Apparently it's "publish your scraps" week.
"B-but it doesn't have to be magic!"
"Of course, dear. We're all very impressed."
Lovely.
"For the fuel, we used the fossilized remains of pre-Pony gigafauna."
"So it runs on ancient kaiju blood?"
"We prefer to call it godzilline."
Eventually, it all comes back to magic, when you sufficiently pierce the question. Witness quantum mechanics.
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I've been trying, but it keeps changing whenever I look at it...