h a l f b a k e r yYeah, I wish it made more sense too.
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Swimming races are slow and kind of boring. Having the water
and
swimmers move this fast could be more exciting to watch.
The fastest swimmers would still win, they'd just fly by the
viewing
stands really fast.
I think there'd be an element strategy to use the curves to
your
advantage,
not sure how you'd do that.
Probably be an element of danger too which certainly adds to
the
excitement level.
Hmm, just looked it up. They don't call swimming races
swimming races for some reason. Maybe because they're so
slow.
For example
https://www.hamilto...ht-series-waterjets
Water jets designed for propulsion. [neutrinos_shadow, Mar 13 2022]
Laminar flow thingies.
https://www.youtube...watch?v=o5L6W0YoAd4
[doctorremulac3, Mar 13 2022]
Jet d'Eau
https://www.bbc.com...rld-europe-66596126
projects 500 litres of water a second at a speed of 200km/h (124mph) [a1, Aug 23 2023]
[link]
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"How fast are water slides?
Riders reach speeds of up to 60 miles (90 kilometers) per
hour
as they plummet down a free-fall slide" Water comes out of
a fire hydrant at 100mph and back in EPA us kids open them
up on a summer day and play in the flow. It'd knock you
down and hurt like hell, send you flying but it was fun. |
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So people in fast running water is already a thing. This
would
just be deeper and as horizontal as possible with turns
tilted
up as necessary to keep the flow contained. |
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The water's being pumped at 100 mph. It's a circular track
with tilted up sides as necessary. |
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Getting into a 100 mph stream isn't easy but I did it and I
was
a kid wearing nothing but my underwear like everybody
else.
(this was the ghetto mind you) |
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Until the fire department and cops came. |
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One of the happiest memories of my life. (the water part,
not the cops) |
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Penstock outlet at a dam might be more like what you'd get.
Anyway, speed could be adjusted, it'd be as fast as practical. |
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If you're going to have a strong current in the water, make it
variable (with cross- currents, etc.), so that the winning
strategy depends on the navigation of those currents. |
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I'm picturing something more like a flooded pinball table
than a circuit. |
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I was thinking that, like in a car you try to get the inside
track, maybe here you try to get the outside? The water
flowign on the outer side of a loop flows faster right? Wait...
yea, because there's more pressure on the inside of the loop
right? So it seeks the path of least resistance. |
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From my experience down one of those fast drop
slides is that you don't have much control at all and
breathing is just sortof whenever you can. You're a
projectile and the currents are not helping. |
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Oh, you'd definately be 95% projectile, but you could still
presumabely be a slightly FASTER projectile than the other
guys. |
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Just occurred to me, would you even bother swimming with
your arms? Maybe you'd go faster just forming a particular
shape, like a squid or something. |
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Yea, might not even be swimming, just trying to stay alive. |
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OK so we go to one of those massive concrete dams, the type with sluices and overflow channels. The swimmers all start standing on the dam. On the start signal they have to dive into the water, swim to the sluice entrance and extreme surf down the overflow channel to the finish line. |
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Whoa, that's something that actually could be done
with
little prep. Tell me there's anybody on Earth who
wouldn't watch that. Think that's worthy of a new
idea post. Daredevil Dam Diving or something. |
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So another twist on this occurred to me: Jumps. |
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Water going that fast hits a ramp, the water and
swimmers are flying hundreds of feet through the air. |
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Unfortunately, many dam spillways have a "flow dissipation"
structure of some sort near the end. Typically solid
concrete... not so good for swimming into.
For a purpose-built course, as long as you can keep the flow
reasonable "smooth" (no turbulence), I think it would be
doable. Plenty of water pumps & water jet units out there for
providing ridiculous water speeds. |
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LOL! Yea, that might make for a very short race. |
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(8th: "And the problem with that is?...") |
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As for the pumps, I'd push the water flow through one of them
"laminar flow" thingies so it wouldn't just be torrential roiling
chaos for the swimmers. |
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100 mph foot race? The wind could make a real difference. |
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Hmm. Like in a wing tunnel eh? I like it. Not sure
how you’d deal with the fans though. |
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No, on a 100 mph moving platform. |
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Okay, yea that would be interesting. |
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They'd be fighting against the wind, so even though
they'd blast by at 100 mph, the'd be struggling to stay
upright and push forward into the wind. |
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Another thing you could do is have a massive 100mph
wind fan blowing them forward. |
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//Getting into a 100 mph stream isn't easy// |
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I'd say you're in deep physical trouble. Human terminal
velocity while falling is 120mph. You take 12-15s to reach
that while falling and if you do, entering water makes large
parts come off usually. |
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Another way of looking at it, is that air is ~1000 fold less
dense than water, so what if you encountered air at 1000
fold more speed for a mass-rate equivalency? 100,000mph?
You're not surviving that. Obviously. |
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Yet another angle, water jet cutters are ~10x higher in
velocity, can we get an idea on the effect on tissue? Well, it
cuts hardened steel like butter so.... |
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If this were implemented, there would be gradients where
contact with the sides slowed the flow, and the middle
would be the fastest, like in all rivers, so if sufficiently
large, you might be able to get to the center without dying. |
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However, given how much horsepower it takes to get a
powerboat to reach 60mph (remember, they're almost
entirely out of the water), then think that they deploy a
nuclear fucking reactor to make a submarine do 35+mph.
With this lazy-river on steroids you'd have multiple fold the
water-surface drag at vastly higher speeds (60 ish knots is
considered something of an underwater hard speed limit). I
think the power needed would probably boil the water. So,
channeling 8th: [+] |
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Wonder if pumps aren't the way to go. Maybe
having a treadmill with paddles on the
bottom. |
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//Wonder if pumps aren't the way to go.// |
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Reading around, pump jets that you might find in jet-skis etc.
Have peak velocities in the in the right range. 25-90m/s. But
that's really pushing it, and it's a LOT of horsepower for a
small amount of water. |
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The thing to do the math from might be those
"swim
in place" little pools you see sometimes. |
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That's of course going, what, 3 or 4 miles per hour,
but you could use that as your base number
example. |
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But maybe just modifying the outlets from the
penstocks
of a dam as had been suggested is the way to go.
Still
plenty of danger there. |
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Hey, do they have any dams that have zig zag fish
ladders or do they all have segments that the
salmon jump into? Might be able to modify one of
those. Nah, too safe. |
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