Wind plays a major role in cycling, since aerodynamic drag is the greatest force hampering a cyclist. In road racing, both individual cyclists and teams use tactics that vary based Keep reading
Tag: drag
Paris 2024: Triathlon Swimming
Unlike the swimming competition, Olympic triathletes complete their swim legs in open waters. There are no lane dividers and no rules against drafting off a fellow athlete. Curious to see Keep reading
Kirigami Parachutes
To fly stably, parachutes need to deform and allow some air to pass through their canopy. In this video, researchers investigate kirigimi parachutes, inspired by a form of paper art Keep reading
Water Jumping Hoops
Small creatures like springtails and spiders can jump off the air-water interface using surface tension. But larger creatures can water-jump, too, using drag. Here, researchers study drag-based water jumping with Keep reading
Drag Is Greatest Before Submersion
A new study shows that partially submerged objects can experience more drag than fully submerged ones. This unexpected result comes from the excess fluid that piles up ahead of the Keep reading
Measuring Drag
After a noticeable rise in the prevalence of home runs beginning in 2015, Major League Baseball commissioned a report that found the increase was caused by a small 3% reduction Keep reading
Superhydrophobic Drag
Using air or bubbles to reduce drag on boats is a popular idea, whether using supercavitation, the Leidenfrost effect, or superhydrophobic coatings. But most of the experiments done thus far Keep reading
Hammerhead Hydrodynamics
Hammerhead sharks have some of the most distinctive craniums in the ocean, which begs the question: how do they swim with that head? New computational fluid dynamics studies suggest that Keep reading
Superman’s Hair Gel
I love a good tongue-in-cheek physical analysis of superheroes. This estimate of the drag force experienced by Superman’s hair when outracing a plane or speeding bullet was done by Cornell Keep reading
If You Teach a Goose to Fly
Scientists do all manner of odd things in the name of science. To teach bar-headed geese – birds capable of flying at the altitude of Everest – to fly in Keep reading