
A Jellyfish-Obsessed Engineer Upended Our Understanding of Swimming - Jtsummers
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/12/weve-got-animal-swimming-all-wrong-says-jellyfish-obsessed-engineer/419169/?single_page=true
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krylon
The nice thing about evolution is that over billions of years, nearly any idea
we can come up with has probably been "tried", be it genius or hare-brained
(including putting brains in hares).

I remember seeing a program on TV years ago about how giving the hulls of
airplanes a rough structure like the skin of a shark reduced their fuel
consumption significantly.

So I expect more of these "inventions" to inspire engineers in years and
decades to come.

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ThomPete
I think thats what we call Biomimicry no?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimetics)

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krylon
Hu. I did not know there was a word for it, but yes, that is exactly what I
meant. :)

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jmquigs
The article talks about how jellyfish create areas of low pressure in front of
them to pull them forward. I wonder if top human swimmers can do something
similar.

Phelps, for example, has an unusual cadence in his freestyle stroke at the end
of the 200IM. He takes two strokes and then pauses for a brief period; its
like a polska rhythm. Maybe some part of this is creating a void in front of
him. Its visible in this video (around 2:03
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cjwuJiwevo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cjwuJiwevo))

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dpflan
I was trying to locate a related article, but I got distracted by a nice WebGL
demo of swimming jellyfish...nice background or parallel window to have open
while reading this article.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794985)

