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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. |
