

Can You Swim Faster in Water or Corn Syrup? - mhb
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/news040920-2.html

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nkurz
This title is misleading, as the article makes no mention of 'corn syrup'.
Instead, they thickened with guar gum to achieve "liquid twice as thick as
water". I'm not sure what standard they are using for 'thickness', but corn
syrup has a viscosity thousands of times more than water.

The article points out that "below a certain threshold of speed and size,
viscous drag becomes the dominant force". I'd strongly guess that humans
swimming in corn syrup is below this point. Thus despite the summary article,
I'd answer that one can swim faster in water than corn syrup.

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noonespecial
To quote my favorite philosopher:

Yes, Pinky, but who would _want_ to?!

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hkuo
This is pretty interesting, but perhaps the new question would be at what
point does the thickness of a liquid slow down a swimmer. For example, there's
no way a person could swim equally fast through water vs mud.

Perhaps the thickness of the syrup was not a significant enough difference to
prove this.

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ImFatYoureFat
I only skimmed the article so they might have covered this, but I would think
that this comparison would, at least in theory, hold true for any two
substances.

Pressure is pressure. No liquid is going to react differently to pressure
applied by your head and shoulders than it does to pressure applied by your
arms and legs. In other words: swimming is essentially pushing against
something with your head while you push against something else with your arms
and legs. The pressure and force received from these two actions should stay
comparably constant in any PURE substance.

So maybe you would swim at a different speed in mud, if there were rocks in
it.

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lmkg
You'd like it to be the case that all you have to worry about is pressure and
force, but that's not always true. A chemistry major in my dorm once made a
non-newtonian fluid just with water and the appropriate concentration of corn
starch. The viscosity is not a constant in such a fluid, but rather scales
with the force applied. If you struck it hard with a pencil, the pencil would
bounce off like the fluid was solid--but if you pushed slowly, it would act
like a thick liquid. It was like... a liquid chinese finger trap.

Since your hands move faster than your head, I think that means you would swim
faster in such a liquid, up to a point, although after a certain point
swimming faster gets harder to. It hurts my head to think about it though.

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masterj
I believe this is the seminal work on the subject:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw>

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S_A_P
I think mythbusters did the same thing with similar results.

Im surprised they didnt do(or if they did, it wasnt mentioned) the difference
in long distances. Maybe it doesnt make much difference for a lap, but what
about the 100m?

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jerf
Note this article does predate the Mythbusters episode (and the study probably
precipitated it). The Mythbusters anecdotally reported that while you could go
roughly as fast in high-viscosity fluid it was much harder; IIRC Jamie
couldn't even finish his highest-viscosity run, or at least made very heavy
weather of it.

(I for one would accept anecdotal reports on the matter, but if you're in an
excessively science-uber-alles mood YMMV.)

~~~
aliston
Right -- this was my initial reaction. You can generate more thrust in a
higher viscosity fluid, which will "cancel out" the increased friction, but it
also takes more energy to generate the increased thrust, so you'd tire out
more quickly.

~~~
bryanh
This may sound absurd, but I wonder if this has ever been seriously tried as a
training platform for competitive swimmers.

~~~
electromagnetic
IIRC mythbusters used a medal winning swimmer and he couldn't perform. His
body was attuned to swimming in water and he was messing up on his strokes
(from what it looked like, he was taking longer to do a stroke in the more
viscous liquids but he was going further with each stroke).

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yanowitz
This is science at its humorous best.

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bradhe
According to the MythBusters, no.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4Q5jZSJbA>

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michaelcampbell
Dunno; I suspect I sink faster in water than I would inevitably sink in
Karo... does that count?

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JoeAltmaier
I swim faster in honey. Don't ask how I know.

