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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."
What you've referred to is called a misplaced modifier, and it occurs when the wrong noun or pronoun is referred to as the precursor to a verb.
For instance, note the following sentence: "I walked down the street, saw a boy and a bike, and he was walking quickly." In this example, the sentence attempts to reference the boy, but actually references the bike. The original statement is grammatically correct.
I'm an English teacher you insensitive clod!
Have you watched the Olympic athletes who have competed in Dancing with the Stars? When it comes to taking direction and altering their physical performance in a short period of time, they're absolutely awe-inspiring. If you're an Olympic athlete, you better be able to quickly make major changes based on either computerized or human coaching instructions. It's like watching a professional actor rapidly portray a half dozen different personae.
Don't buy into journalists and others grasping at straws here. They couldn't find anything different about the pool, so they start reaching for things that would be obvious to anyone who watched swimming four years ago or has ever seen a swimming event. Extra lanes? Common. Wave-dissipating buoy lines? Common. Extra depth? Eh, not so much, but I know my school's pool is more than 2 meters in depth and it's considered OK.
I think what you're seeing is natural, both the sportsmen and women are better than ever, and the swimsuits are better than ever. Result: world records falling left and right.
I'd like to see the NBC and other groups congratulate Phelps rather than talk about fluff stories like how it's such a fast pool. If it's so fast, and it's not that Phelps is simply the fastest swimmer, then, well, all the other swimmers should be racing for first rather than second.
By doping, which is "bad", the athlete is increasing his ability to overcome the environment.
By using technology we're mitigating the effects of the environment on their performance. That's good?
The spirit of the Olympics is long gone.
No sig for you!!
It is engineered to reduce turbulence but no more than other top-level pools around the world. Pools with 10 lanes, slop gutters to eat waves, and greater then 2m depth are not unheard of. Besides, while plenty of world records are being beaten at these Olympics, plenty were also beaten before the Olympics...in the last year or two many world records have gone down at other events. Before each race NBC puts up a listing of the current world record for that event. Take a look--many are dated 2006 or 2007; some date back a few more years, but none are very old.
We happen to be in a period of dramatic change in swimming right now, and there are probably a number of reasons. If you want to point to just one, it is probably that there is a lot more money in the sport now. So Michael Phelps could afford, through endorsements and grants, to train at a full-time professional level since he was an early teen. This has huge implications for his technique, fitness, health, and mental toughness for competition.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, it's mostly due to the swimsuits they're wearing. All of the winners are wearing special suits that decrease drag as much as possible and also have rigid areas that reinforce the swimmer's form so that it doesn't degrade as the swimmer tires.
Yeah, the spirit of the games is pretty much gone.
Go climb into a pool yourself and swim a few. And don't ask me to haul you out when you're drowning and can't make it to the side. Swimming is one of the most demanding sports there is. Besides, they do other things, like lift weights and sprint on dry land.
Do away with our corrupt tax code. Support the Fair Tax
Agreed. People need to stop gawking at how many medals he's winning. They represent winning events that vary little in terms of training and skill. Now if somebody won a gold in cycling and long distance running, THAT would be a real accomplishment.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
I'm pretty sure that coming in fourth place in a single Olympic event is a real accomplishment.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Swimming is one of the most demanding sports there is.
Of course, that is hard to measure - it's very subjective. One thing you can measure is lactic acid buildup (which causes pain when you ask your body to use up all the oxygen coming in).
The two sports with the highest levels of lactic acid buildup are rowing and cross-country skiing.
Hell, just qualifying for the Olympics is a huge accomplishment.
The difference between sprinting and distance is certainly respected in the default settings. It's treated like running, where the shortest and longest distances get the most points.
Where swimming gives in to useless medal inflation is in the different strokes. We don't have track events where everybody has to run sideways, or backwards, or upside-down. A runner is welcome to do that, if he can, and if it's faster he'll win.
That's how swimming should be: they should be able to use any stroke they like. We just want to see who's fastest. What's the point of forcing the use of a slow stroke and then measuring speed?