The Bernoulli drive is a type of data storage device which resembles the cartridge drive, only with improved characteristics. Like the cartridge drive, the Bernoulli drive has interchangeable cartridges which are larger than those of the floppy diskette and can hold vastly more information. However, rather than the rigid ceramic or plastic disk of the common cartridge, the Bernoulli cartridge houses a flexible recording disk. This flexibility allows the drive to take advantage of the Bernoulli effect, which gives the drive its enhanced characteristics. The Bernoulli effect is so called because it was first documented and described by the 18th Century Swiss mathematician, Daniel Bernoulli. It deals with a particular phenomenon of the fluid dynamics of moving air or water. Bernoulli noticed that when air moves rapidly over an object, it exerts less pressure on the object as it flows past. When the air flows more rapidly over the curved surface of an airplane wing than under it, the diminished pressure on the top of the wing causes the wing to lift. The effect is exploited in the Bernoulli drive by passing air rapidly over the flexible recording disk. The disk, which normally droops away from the read/write head, is lifted by the reduced pressure above it. This allows the recording disk to come much closer to the head than with a hard disk drive. If a regular hard drive were to be jarred, or experience a loss of power, the head could crash into the recording disk, damaging it. In the Bernoulli drive, however, the flexible disk would merely lose some of its lift and fall away from the head, minimizing the risk of head crashes.
