Being a swim coach for Total immersion and a Physics teacher in training, I've had many an opportunity to think long and hard about the physics of swimming. I don't have any static display ideas, but here's a few thoughts:
Swimming demonstrates the concept of Work (more for some folks than for others): All the force you can muster doesn't mean squat if you can't translate it into forward momentum (i.e., displacement). If you can use less force and increase the magnitude of the displacement, you are accomplishing work.
For many swimmers, kicking outside of the slipstream (a "bicycling kick" common among runners) causes so much drag (in the form of Force against the direction of momentum) as to prevent forward motion completely. 99% of the time, this is the root cause for anyone who goes nowhere no matter how hard they kick but slips through the water like a fish when they use a pull buoy.
Vectors: swimming towards a buoy in open water (ocean or river), with a current from the side at x knots, where should you enter the water in order to swim the shortest distance to the buoy? Where should you direct the net force of your stroke (i.e., at what angle should your body be / show the vector of the applied force) in order to minimize the effort?
Hydrodynamics / Archimedes Principle / the Buoyant force: TI advocates balancing forward in the water (keeping the head nose down vs. the old school "goggles at the water line" approach): Applying force downward increases the pressure beneath the body, and the resultant force on the body (which opposes gravity) aids the body in maintaining momentum, reducing the need for additional propulsive force.
Limited by Newtons 1st Law - A body in motion in the water and drag from the fluid medium as well as drag due to surface tension.
Specific Gravity of water vs. the human body, in fresh vs. salt water
Impact of Drag on a body in motion in water and the importance of Body Position. The impact of wetsuits(buoyancy and reducing drag).
You can also test the validity of the Doc Councilman arguments about Bernoulli's principle and lift, which he used as a proponent of the old "S Pull". I will sometimes use it to relate the TI concept of "anchoring".
There's gotta be something in there that can be translated into a display. I'll work on it (after this semester, of course. The siren call of solid-state physics lures me away...)
Rich Barkan
MetroTri.com
Swimming demonstrates the concept of Work (more for some folks than for others): All the force you can muster doesn't mean squat if you can't translate it into forward momentum (i.e., displacement). If you can use less force and increase the magnitude of the displacement, you are accomplishing work.
For many swimmers, kicking outside of the slipstream (a "bicycling kick" common among runners) causes so much drag (in the form of Force against the direction of momentum) as to prevent forward motion completely. 99% of the time, this is the root cause for anyone who goes nowhere no matter how hard they kick but slips through the water like a fish when they use a pull buoy.
Vectors: swimming towards a buoy in open water (ocean or river), with a current from the side at x knots, where should you enter the water in order to swim the shortest distance to the buoy? Where should you direct the net force of your stroke (i.e., at what angle should your body be / show the vector of the applied force) in order to minimize the effort?
Hydrodynamics / Archimedes Principle / the Buoyant force: TI advocates balancing forward in the water (keeping the head nose down vs. the old school "goggles at the water line" approach): Applying force downward increases the pressure beneath the body, and the resultant force on the body (which opposes gravity) aids the body in maintaining momentum, reducing the need for additional propulsive force.
Limited by Newtons 1st Law - A body in motion in the water and drag from the fluid medium as well as drag due to surface tension.
Specific Gravity of water vs. the human body, in fresh vs. salt water
Impact of Drag on a body in motion in water and the importance of Body Position. The impact of wetsuits(buoyancy and reducing drag).
You can also test the validity of the Doc Councilman arguments about Bernoulli's principle and lift, which he used as a proponent of the old "S Pull". I will sometimes use it to relate the TI concept of "anchoring".
There's gotta be something in there that can be translated into a display. I'll work on it (after this semester, of course. The siren call of solid-state physics lures me away...)
Rich Barkan
MetroTri.com