{"id":307349,"date":"2021-07-23T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-staying-submerged-gives-olympians-the-winning-edge\/"},"modified":"2021-07-23T18:00:03","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T15:00:03","slug":"how-staying-submerged-gives-olympians-the-winning-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-staying-submerged-gives-olympians-the-winning-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"#How staying submerged gives Olympians the winning edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How staying submerged gives Olympians the winning edge<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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To win swimming gold in Tokyo, swimmers not only have to generate incredible power with their arms and legs to propel themselves through the water; they also have to overcome the relentless pull of the water’s drag while doing so.<\/p>\n


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Without being able to don special low-drag suits or use technologies to help them fly over the water, how can swimmers make the effect of the water’s drag as small as possible?<\/p>\n

The best athletes in this year’s Olympics will do it by swimming under, rather than on top of, the water\u2014at least as far as the rules allow.<\/p>\n

Waves are a drag<\/b><\/p>\n

Water is much denser than air, so you might assume swimmers would benefit from using a technique that allows them to sit high in the water, with as much of their body out of the water as possible.<\/p>\n

But there are two problems with this strategy. <\/p>\n

First, it costs energy to produce the forces needed to lift the body, which would be better spent propelling the swimmer forwards towards the finishing wall.<\/p>\n

Second, when we travel<\/a> on the water’s surface we waste energy making waves. During fast swimming, such as in the sprint freestyle events or during starts and turns (where speeds exceed 2 meters per second, or about 7 kilometers per hour), wave generation slows the swimmer down more than any other factor. Reducing wave formation is therefore vital to swimming success.<\/p>\n

Waves are produced as the pressure exerted by the swimmer on the water forces the water upwards and out of their path. Other pressure changes around the swimmer’s body also cause waves to form behind them, and sometimes to the side.<\/p>\n

The energy required to generate waves comes from the swimmer themselves, so a lot of the power generated by the swimmer’s muscles is used in wave generation rather than moving the swimmer forwards. <\/p>\n

But waves aren’t formed when we (or fish, dolphins or whales) swim under the water, because waves only form when an object (like us) moves at the boundary between two fluids of different densities, such as water and air during swimming. And this fact hints at an intriguing solution to the drag issue.<\/p>\n


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