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

And The Science Consists of

[Anonymous Coward]

Steriods.

P.S. Impeach John McCain before he becomes U.S. Dictator to replace Bush

Re:And The Science Consists of

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Congratulations! You have dropped below the Mendoza Line of trolldom. Stupid, wrong-headed, and inflammatory - your idiotic little post has it all. You are the compleat moron and should have your vestigial little proto-testicles ripped from your scrotum with rusty pliers to prevent you from ever polluting the gene pool.

2. You can't impeach non-Presidents.

Re:Hmm... I have a correction to the title

[hondo77]

You'd have to leave your parents' basement for it to make sense.

Re:Problems with slashdot...is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

stop censoring the posts....that way you will be more informed next time asshat.