Swim smarts: Engineers? Drag increases as speed increases?
Former Member
I overheard one of the local club team coaches prepping the kids before a technique based drill make the statement that the faster you go the more drag you encounter. He was having them ensure they kept their shoulder to cheek on their free sets to narrow the frontal profile. While I am not questioning the coach I just wanted to know if one of you smart Masters swimmers might be able to dumb that down for me.
So to ensure I lay this out to the best of my understanding which is probably wrong: for two physical clones swimming freestyle in lanes next to each other with completely identical technical strokes down to the mm. The drag for the 1:20 pace swimmer will be less than the swimmer peeling off 1:10 splits? I'm a big dummy so wrapping my head around that idea just isn't sinking in.
Thanks for the Saturday morning hydrodynamics lesson!
Ha ha - I woke up this morning wondering "What the heck was I thinking?" about my idea too, and also came to the conclusion I must've been suffering from sleep deprivation. My fish suit would only work underwater for one thing - hence some kind of "human powered submersible" or maybe just a glorified scuba suit - a kind of mash up of I-Am-The-Walrus-In-A-Yellow-Submarine, I guess.
But if a person could actually get up enough speed to rise up on your hydrofoil, I imagine they'd have such low resistance at that point that they could keep going with much less effort? Maybe they'd just need extra-large paddles on their hands?
Crazy as these ideas sound, you just never know. I had actually pictured this as a kid:
en.wikipedia.org/.../Zorbing
and now it exists.
Still, better hand these things over to the engineers and let them figure out the details...
Ha ha - I woke up this morning wondering "What the heck was I thinking?" about my idea too, and also came to the conclusion I must've been suffering from sleep deprivation. My fish suit would only work underwater for one thing - hence some kind of "human powered submersible" or maybe just a glorified scuba suit - a kind of mash up of I-Am-The-Walrus-In-A-Yellow-Submarine, I guess.
But if a person could actually get up enough speed to rise up on your hydrofoil, I imagine they'd have such low resistance at that point that they could keep going with much less effort? Maybe they'd just need extra-large paddles on their hands?
Crazy as these ideas sound, you just never know. I had actually pictured this as a kid:
en.wikipedia.org/.../Zorbing
and now it exists.
Still, better hand these things over to the engineers and let them figure out the details...
