How many pennies I should duct tape to my swim snorkel to counter the buoyancy created by the air in the snorkel’s tube?
I was experimenting with using the snorkel today and found the upward pressure it placed on my forehead (where the snorkel strap meets my head) unpleasant. I wondered if somehow weighting the snorkel would help, and came up with the plan of taping pennies to it.
But how many? I have noticed that there are a number of physics-savvy people on the forums, and wondered if someone could figure this out.
It’s a Finis Freestyle snorkel. The volume of the tube varies—there’s about 22cm of tubing that is round, with a diameter of about 2cm, and an additional 32cm of tubing that is a rounded rectangular shape (around 3 x 1 cm). About 3 cm of the latter section is above the water when I swim.
So can anyone help me with this? My purple plaid duct tape is at the ready.
(And if anyone has any better ideas for fixes, involving either snorkel or swimming technique modifications, I’d love to hear them!)
So, here are the various results of my snorkel experiments over the last few days:
It takes 80 pennies to neutralize the buoyancy of the air in my snorkel when both ends are taped.
Taping 12 pennies to the snorkel improves the way it feels on my forehead; 20 pennies is even better (although it wiggles around more when I push off walls that way).
I'm still working on padding the snorkel strap. The problem seems to be that the strap only contacts my forehead at one point, right in the middle where the two semi-rigid sections of the strap almost meet. These pieces are curved, but the curvature doesn't match that of my head, so the rest of these sections of strap don't make contact with my forehead. So I need something that is soft and somewhat bulky to pad these sections with, so that the pressure from the snorkel is distributed evenly across my forehead, and not centered right on one point.
On a positive note, the purple plaid duct tape I used to tape the pennies was widely admired. I'm thinking of decorating the edges of my paddles with it as well.:)
So, here are the various results of my snorkel experiments over the last few days:
It takes 80 pennies to neutralize the buoyancy of the air in my snorkel when both ends are taped.
Taping 12 pennies to the snorkel improves the way it feels on my forehead; 20 pennies is even better (although it wiggles around more when I push off walls that way).
I'm still working on padding the snorkel strap. The problem seems to be that the strap only contacts my forehead at one point, right in the middle where the two semi-rigid sections of the strap almost meet. These pieces are curved, but the curvature doesn't match that of my head, so the rest of these sections of strap don't make contact with my forehead. So I need something that is soft and somewhat bulky to pad these sections with, so that the pressure from the snorkel is distributed evenly across my forehead, and not centered right on one point.
On a positive note, the purple plaid duct tape I used to tape the pennies was widely admired. I'm thinking of decorating the edges of my paddles with it as well.:)
