"So, what do you do?"... aka All in a Daze Work

ahhhhhhhh that's a fun one to answer... "ahh yes, humm *adjusts pocket protector* I am a professional nerd"... that is what folks (JamieOcoughcough*) usually hear when I say "I am an Aerospace Engineer"...
and then they say "thaaats niiice!?!?" heeehee
ok, so in defense of my occupation... I have decided to start the "All in a Daze Work" series where I will try to give the 'pretty picture' explanation of what I do, or what I studied in school, or what kinds of stuff I would generally do in my job field.
To start out we have...

 

 ...I thought about assigning homework and making you guess what this is...but I am too...ah well

this is a horizontal tornado... really, it is. It is caused by the end of the wings where the high pressure air under the wings surges toward the low pressure air above the wings and thus creates a wing tip vortex. (The red in the picture is simply a smoke flare they used to visualize the air currents.
Cool looking picture...very bad winds...but that's what rokit nerds are for...fixing those kinds of problems.

Here is another sweet one...

 

SCRAMJET anyone? That little sliver is an experimental vehicle (the x43a) that NASA uses to test flight at hypersonic speeds...that is greater than Mach 7 if you are counting.
it is generally deployed from the wing of a B52 bomber mid-flight ...then accelerated to supersonic speeds by a modified rocket...then takes about a 10 second flight on its own power...then crashes (intentionally) into the ocean where it is recovered. Ten seconds is not a long time...but at those speeds, it will go quite a long distance.
The most interesting thing about the scramjets is their 'engine'...takes in air like a regular jet, but there is no rotors ...virtually no moving parts. It has to be such, because anything that gets in the way of that airflow through the engine would be melted instantly by the heat. These special engines...only start working above speeds of Mach 6...
The image above is actually a simulation using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) to visualize the shock waves that form around the vehicle.
Sound off with questions or comments.

-The Nuge*