Drafting

Originally posted by Conniekat8 Here's an experiment that may answer some of your questions: Go to the bathtub, fill it up with water. Take your 3 hole punch and empty the confetty over the water surface. Put your hand in the water (slowly and carfully, to disturb the surface as little as possible) then pull your hand in a fast liner motion in one direction, as if it is a swimmer going in that direction. Watch what happens to the confetti. Do it again, at variable speeds and variable hand depth and cross section. I don't think that what happens with the confetti relates in any significant way to the drafting effects we are talking about. It just shows where the tail eddys and turbulence and, perhaps how it moves. The confetti is simply reacting to water that has already been accelerated by the passing of the hand - they are not significantly changing the water flow. Actually my question about how the phenomena experienced by birds and nascar drivers might relate to swimming regards the interplay of the leader swimmer's wake with the drafter and, in the case of the drafter creeping up along side of the leader's legs/hips, the effect of the drafter's wake on the leader. I also question whether the drafter actually gets close enough to the lead swimmer to mimic the Nascar paradigm (where the two cars effectively act as one long car as far as air flow is concerned). If not, then drafting will not necessarily be a boon to the lead swimmer. If so, then drafting is almost certainly a boon to the lead swimmer - though not as big a boon as it is to the drafting swimmer.

Originally posted by Conniekat8 Here's an experiment that may answer some of your questions: Go to the bathtub, fill it up with water. Take your 3 hole punch and empty the confetty over the water surface. Put your hand in the water (slowly and carfully, to disturb the surface as little as possible) then pull your hand in a fast liner motion in one direction, as if it is a swimmer going in that direction. Watch what happens to the confetti. Do it again, at variable speeds and variable hand depth and cross section. I don't think that what happens with the confetti relates in any significant way to the drafting effects we are talking about. It just shows where the tail eddys and turbulence and, perhaps how it moves. The confetti is simply reacting to water that has already been accelerated by the passing of the hand - they are not significantly changing the water flow. Actually my question about how the phenomena experienced by birds and nascar drivers might relate to swimming regards the interplay of the leader swimmer's wake with the drafter and, in the case of the drafter creeping up along side of the leader's legs/hips, the effect of the drafter's wake on the leader. I also question whether the drafter actually gets close enough to the lead swimmer to mimic the Nascar paradigm (where the two cars effectively act as one long car as far as air flow is concerned). If not, then drafting will not necessarily be a boon to the lead swimmer. If so, then drafting is almost certainly a boon to the lead swimmer - though not as big a boon as it is to the drafting swimmer.