The US Swim Team's Secret Weapon, Science

Hugh Pickens writes "When American Swimmer Margaret Hoelzer goes for the gold tonight in the 200-meter backstroke, part of her success will be due to a new system developed by Tim Wei, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, that uses fluid dynamics to study human movement allowing scientists and coaches to study how fast and hard a swimmer pushes the water as he moves through it. 'Wei uses a tracking technique called digital particle image velocimetry, commonly used to measure the flow of small particles around an airplane or small fish or crustaceans in water.' Wei filtered compressed air in a scuba tank through a porous hose to create bubbles about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. When an athlete swims through a sheet of bubbles that rises from the pool floor, a camera captures their flow around the swimmer's body and the images show the direction and speed of the bubbles, which Wei then translates into the swimmer's thrust using software that he wrote."

Comments

It's not just technique

[Solandri]

It's not just better technique and the new suit. The pool is also designed to reduce waves to help lower times. A lot of the wave dissipation features described in the article have been used in tow tanks (where we tow model ships to measure their drag) for decades.

Re:Interpretation?

[BitterOldGUy]

Hydrodynamics comes into also. So it's not just power but also how well they move through the water. Efficiency.

I have much more power than any of the girls, well most of them, on the US Team, but in the water, they'll blow my doors off because of better technique - the ability to apply their power in the water. That's the best I can do. It's been a while since I read my swim coaching stuff.