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Making the World's Fastest Kayak
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek looks at the world's fastest kayak, which floats over the water rather than nosing through waves like more typical boats. Named 'Little Wing' for the fore and aft wings that add stability, the kayak is the creation of Ted Warren. An MIT-educated engineer, Warren 'played around for three years with 3-D wire mesh designs on his PC, crunching the numbers for speed and stability, then started building actual models to test in the waters near his Massachusetts home.'"
Like this one. And did you all know that Alexander Graham Bell was a pioneer in hydrofoils?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The expression 'world fastest kayak' is somewhat like 'world fastest running shoes'. Race kayaking is all about the motor and to a much lesser degree about the kayak.
It makes much more sense to speak about the water resistance of various kayak designs. For some given athlete(balance skills, strength and technique) racing some given distance in some given conditions one could even speak of an optimal design. As a general example - the kayaks used for sprint racing are different from the kayaks used for marathon racing.
On a related note genetic algorithms have been applied to the problem of finding an optimal hull given a number of constraints: http://www.cyberiad.net/library/kayaks/racing/raci ng.htm
Nothing revolutionary turned out though.