BIT Byte    Swimming

Swimming, fluid dynamics, fast twitch muscles and Respighi 

 

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Swimming World Honors 2008 World Swimmers of the Year

swimmingworldmagazine 12/1/08

The 2008 Swimming World Male and Female World Swimmers of the Year are Michael Phelps of the U.S. and Stephanie Rice of Australia.

Two world records fall at World Cup swimming meet in Stockholm

Canadian Press 11/12/08

South African swimmer Cameron van der Burgh set his third world short-course record in four days at a World Cup swimming meet Tuesday.

Also, Peter Marshall regained the 100-metre backstroke record in 49.94 seconds, breaking American countryman Ryan Lochte's time of 49.99 from the 2006 world championships. Lochte took the record from Marshall. Another American, Randall Bal, came second in 50.30 seconds.

Secret to Penguin Locomotion Revealed

Yahoo 11/13/08

Penguins are wobbly on land, but their extreme underwater agility involves the perfection of a twisting wing motion that is just now coming to be understood.  A new study found that by twisting their wings while pumping them under water to swim, the birds are able to vary the thrust of their flapping and increase control over their movements.  The motion is so useful researchers are testing it out on prototypes for new underwater spy vehicles.

Navy SEALs Could Turn Superhuman

popular mechanics 11/01/07

Instead of kicking, PowerSwim calls for a kind of undulation as its hinged foils pivot up and down. Similar to the way a dolphin or tortoise pumps its fins, this motion generates both lift and thrust. And while artificial fins operate within the swimmer’s own wake (they form a kind of expanding cone, starting at a swimmer’s shoulders), the PowerSwim’s lead foil—or propulsor foil—sweeps through the water just outside that wake.

The Speedo LZR racer: feedback on a developing debate

The Science of Sport 3/25/08

This suit is making waves in the swimming world, since it has been worn for 9 out of 9 world records in the pool this year! Some coaches believe the issue of fairness needs to be debated, with calls for ethics debates around it.

Vortices and Propulsion – Arellano

Universidade do Porto 7/6/99

A review of the general theory of swimming propulsion is presented relating this with knowledge about vortices in steady and unsteady flow conditions.

Zhang Lab

Physics NYU

I have been working on physical problems in fluid dynamics that are related to biology and geophysics. To be more specific, I study the flapping of flags in the wind (this problem is closely related to the swimming of fish), the thrust generation and the flapping locomotion of birds and fish, thermal convection in the geophysical context (the coupling between continents and the convective mantle), etc.


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