Subject: Re: [baidarka] Paddles
From: wolfgang brinck (nativewater@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Mar 17 2005 - 19:35:43 EST
--- Peter Chopelas <pac@premier1.net> wrote:
Yes, get out and experiment, but
> do it
> in an educated and intelligent way. Or you will learn nothing.
I wouldn't dismiss uneducated seat of the pants experimentation
entirely. Since I got my GPS a year ago, I have been taking various
paddles and timing myself. I can get some comparative measure of
paddle efficiency at maximum effort (my effort) by how fast I can
move my boat.
Secondly, paddle efficiency is a very difficult thing to measure
since it involves both the paddle and the paddler. You could figure
out a boat's resistance to forward motion at a give speed easily
enough. But figuring out how much energy the paddler is burning to
maintain that speed is not as easy. I don't know of any off the
shelf human calorimeters.
I think that this inability to accurately and easily measure paddle
efficiency (energy put into forward boat motion) / (energy expended
by the paddler) is one of the main reasons that inefficient paddles
continue to be manufactured and people continue to buy them. My
suspicion is that native paddles are more efficient on average for
cruising speeds than commercial paddles.
> These
> are well understood processes by those that study it, the rest seem
> to
> wallow around in ingornat specualtion and "discover" mostly useless
> information about what does not work well. You realize you also
> need
> some objective way of measuring the results of your experiments,
> which
> is not easy to do when a human is part of your "machine".
>
Exactly, we have good science for half of the process. I think what
sells sports equipment is not science but the alpha monkey
phenomenon.
Whatever equipment the winning monkey uses, the other monkeys pick up
as well. Never mind that the winning monkey won because he was
stronger and not because he had better equipment.
Wolfgang
http://www.wolfgangbrinck.com/boats
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