Olympic divers slice into a pool with a quick turn underwater that minimizes splash. But not for the reasons many athletes think it does, according to research reported November 20 at a meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics in Indianapolis.
“The way that divers describe it,” says fluid mechanics researcher Elizabeth Gregorio of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., “is that they want to pull the splash in with them.” The goal is a nearly splashless rip entry that Gregorio says makes a sound resembling tearing paper.
To study the move, Gregorio duplicated it with hinged models that bend in the middle, much as a
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