Warm v/s Cold and Fresh v/s Saltwater

I know that in numerous other threads the subject of personal preferences -as to water temperature- has been addressed. What I'd like to -not so much talk about- but hear about is this: Temperature: Cold water is denser than warmer water. Pro: A swimmer will float higher (maybe a nano-millimiter but still higher and we're talking about a sport where 0.01 of a second makes a difference). Con: Beinf desner it offers more resistance/drag Question: Does the Pro eliminate, compensate or overcompensate the Con? Salt v/s Fresh: Everyone floats higher in Saltwater (more buyoancy because of the salt content and thus -again- density) I am one of those lucky swimmers who swims naturally high (in either). Now I know -personally- that I swim faster in a saltwater pool (There's one in Alexandria, Egypt at the Auromobile Club where they use Seawater.) However this is just a freak since no meets -that I know of- are "pool" (i.e., CW-Closed Water) meets in Saltwater. Therefore, same question Does the Pro (more buyoancy) elminiate or compensate the Con? I'd like to try swimming in the Dead Sea (where they say that a horseshoe could float. No. Wait a minute; that's cowboy-made coffee!) What is it that floats in the Dead Sea but sinks in other seas? Searched Google (not very intently) but found no mention of actual items (apart from bodies) that could float only (or higher) there: www.atlastours.net/.../deadsea.html Another site www.srh.weather.gov/.../dead_max.htm states: This same kind of question (about salt water vs chlorinated water in regards to bouyancy / water density and which might be faster for swimming) came up at our YMCA pool when they switched from using Chlorine to using a bromine salt mixture (which included some regular NACL salt as well). The pool now tastes like Ocean water LOL! The agegroup swim coach (who uses the pool for his team practices) said he asked a physics professor he knew about what the effects of the change in bouynacy might have on his swimmers training in that pool....like whether the kids would swim faster times in this pool but then swim slower times at the meets (which were predominantly held in Chlorinated pools).....The answer he received from the physics prof was that the increase in bouyancy (due to the salt content) basically cancels out the effect of the denser water (which makes it harder to swim through due to increased resistance and drag) ...so that the net effect of the increased bouyancy (which increases your swimming speed) together with the denser water (which slows down your swimming speed) is basically a wash in that the two more or less cancel eachother out for the most part. I have no idea how this professor actually was able to draw those conclusions but thats the message I received from the local swim coach here in town. Since the pool has switched to the salt mixture, I haven't detected any differences in my personal speed in that pool. Now as far as comparing the salt water of the Oceans (or the Dead Sea for that matter) with the water in most Chlorinated swimming pools goes....I can't say.....but it seems reasonable enough based on what this professor said, that a similar canceling out effect could be true here as well? It is a very interesting question though! As far as temperature goes, I have never heard or read anything about the differences in bouyancy vs resistence due to temperature variation in swimming pools (or open water for that matter). I wonder if a similar canceling out effect occurs here as well? Very interesting post though 3strokes! Newmastersswimmer

Slightly off topic ... There was an interesting study done a few years ago. "You can swim just as fast in a pool of gloop. Scientists have filled a swimming pool with a syrupy mixture and proved it." "What appealed was the bizarreness of the idea," says Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who led the experiment. It's a question that also fascinated his student Brian Gettelfinger, a competitive swimmer who narrowly missed out on a place at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens. Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-meter swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water. "It looked like snot," says Cussler. The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers' times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.