Friday, February 10, 2006

Swimming in syrup is as easy as water

nature.com (article)

The age old question of: Is swimming in water faster than swimming in syrup, has been answered. (I didn't know that this was a timeless question...)


Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-metre swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water. "It looked like snot," says Cussler.
The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers' times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.


There you go, you can swim as fast in syrup as you can in water. Now, I know what everyone is thinking... What about lava? Can you swim in that as fast as water?

2 comments:

Blessum Yellowstone Trip said...

I'm pretty sure that was done at the U of M.
:)

Maria said...

the only thing that confuses me, is what happens when you accidentally like snort up some "syrup" or something, wouldnt that kinda slow down your swimming cause you would be gagging down snot looking water?