Have you ever heard the funny phrase, “fast pool”? Did you say “What do you mean the swimming pool is fast? Swimming pools don’t move…” 

Well, it just simply means the swimming pool will allow you to swim faster than other pools. Different pools, each one of them have something unique. But there are a lot of things that ican make the pool “faster”. There are rankings of which pool is faster than others based on science and statistics.

Let me tell you what I knowWell let talk little bit about it.

There are three types of drags in swimming that slows us down; Wave drag (waves on top of the surface or under), viscous fluid drag (water viscosity) and frictional drag (skin). Engineering a good pool can prevent some of these. 

1.       Wave drag – the water needs to be calm as possible to swim fast.

·         Deep water – swimming pool needs to be deep. When it is deep, it is less likely to make waves by humans in the water. It takes more time for the water to bounce back from the bottom when you move along. Your tub is easier to makes waves in, right?

·         Wider lane – when lanes are bigger, it is harder for the waves created by the person next to you to come in.

·         Lane rope size – when it’s big, waves crash in to it and do not invade other lanes. There is something called wave eating lanes (stops waves when it hits it).

2.       Viscous fluid drag

·         The quality of the water is very important. There is a lot of chemistry involved.

·         Temperature of the water is also important. It is not important in regards to drag but for cooling your body down or heating it up. Physiologists have proven that too warm or cold will cause humans to expend energy to keep optimum human body temperature. So there is optimum temperature for the water. 

3.       Frictional drag

·         There are new cool swim suits that are engineered to be fast. This is a big topic and I will talk about it later.

Color and mood, or history of the pool can also have an effect mentally on swimmers also. The pool in Beijing, known as the Water Cube is going to be great.

Guest Blogger – Micah Belew

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