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At 10:27 PM 3/4/97 -0500, Mike Tennant wrote: >Jeff > >>The bottom line is this: >>1) as my friend at the research center says "they're just >pulling the >>streamline stuff out their .... This stuff would not even show >up on our >>sensative testing equipment. >just what is this "super senstive machine" and what is it designed to >calculate drag on? > >So what you are saying is that streamlining does not matter and does not >cause significant drag? That is how I took it. 'Scuse me, but are you "streamlining" yourself to go through the water faster -- or for SNAG PREVENTION? To a ship designer, streamlining is all about designing a hull that takes less "push" to move it through the water ... "efficiency" is measured by the ease with which the water slips around and past its form. By that measure, the human body is dreadfully INefficient, enough so to justify Jeff's friend in his skepticism. Whether those dangling hoses, free-floating Jersey reels and lights, free-flopping gauges and octopi mean a damn to swimming efficiency, THEY DO catch, scrape, snag, bang, and grab onto the objects around you. What if something got wedged between a hatch-edge and a coaming, or more generically and classically "between a rock and a hard place"? Worth your attention to avoid that, right? Maybe worth your LIFE! For me, it would be laughably futile to "streamline" myself for the sake of swimming speed. But pulling in those hoses, gauges and other objects so they're snug and "streamlined" WILL help keep them from catching on the environment ... which helps me be a safer diver, which keeps me alive! Isn't that what streamlining is really about -- safety, more than speed? Richard Westlake rickwest@er*.co* - avatar@be*.co* =========================================================================== "The trouble with people isn't their ignorance -- it's the number of things they know that just ain't so." --Mark Twain +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Please send messages for the WreckDiver list to: wreckdiver@wreckdiver.com Send subscription and help requests to: wreckdiver-request@wreckdiver.com +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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