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Slippery
as a Shark in Water.
That's what all the
American Olympic swim team members hope they
are this summer in Athens. And, thanks
to several years of research and development,
they just might be.
For many years it seemed
like Olympic swimsuits were getting smaller
and smaller, as the athletes tried to reduce
drag through the water. You wouldn't think
a little suit or some hair on the chest of a
man or a woman's pony tail would create much
drag, but you'd be wrong. According
to research in Computational Fluid Dynamics
(how stuff moves through water to you and me)
friction drag accounts for 29% of total drag
on a swimmer in the water.
Obviously, we're talking
about swimmers who are doing more than taking
a leisurely few laps in the pool at home.
This is about swimmers who live and die by hundredths
or even thousandths of a second in Olympic races.
This year's Olympians will be wearing suits
from neck to ankles and down to their wrists
in an attempt to shave off those critical blinks
of an eye to take home the gold.
Shark
Bait
It all started with
sharks. The skin of a shark is streamlined
and has a texture to it that cuts down friction,
allowing it to swim faster than its prey.
But it apparently goes much further than that.
Different areas
of the shark skin are textured differently,
making full use of the fluid dynamics that its
act of swimming sets in motion.
The texture is rougher on the shark's snout,
where it's going to stir up turbulence anyway,
and smoother further back where the turbulence
will have dissipated. Amazing!
Enter
Speedo, Formula One and Computational Fluid
Dynamics!
Speedo has been the
biggest name in sport racing swimwear for a
long time. The company has taken
four years to thoroughly research and develop
the next generation of racing swimwear based
on the work of marine biologists studying sharks,
the computer modeling software used by Formula
One race teams to design their sports cars,
and the science of Computational Fluid Dynamics.
What they've come up
with is a suit that has different textures in
different areas, just like the shark skin.
In fact, there are suits designed for men and
for women -- different patterns of texture,
based on body shape. To take it a step
further, there are even stroke-specific suits
to maximize a swimmer's performance in a single-stroke
race (for instance, the 100 meter Butterfly.)
Drag on a suit is different if the swimmer is
using different strokes.
How do you get into
the silly things? We imagine it is quite
a chore. They zip up the back, and the
seams have been moved from the traditional side
position to improve comfort and improve water
dynamics (they got this from the Formula One
people, who will try just about anything in
designing their cars to reduce racing times
by the slightest bit.)
The
gauntlet has been thrown.
The new FastSkin
FSII suit is being highly touted as giving a
swimmer a 4% decrease in passive drag -- and
that could mean the difference between a gold
medal and no medal at all in a competitive meet
like the Olympics. US swimming
phenomenon Michael Phelps has been working with
Speedo in the designing of the suit, and Speedo
has challenged him to equal legendary Mark Spitz's
record and win seven gold medals in Athens.
If he does it, there's
a $1 million prize in it from Speedo.
After all, they couldn't buy that kind of advertising
for ten times the price!
So, when you see the
strangely-suited US team, now you'll know a
little more about what's on the line, and what
their secret weapon is all about. Suits
sell for about $700 each, if you can even get
them, and so better-equipped teams will have
an edge. We'll
see if they live up to the hype when they hit
the water. |
