Thread: Dimples
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Old 01-23-2009, 06:16 PM   #6 (permalink)
pasadena_commut
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead View Post
The data is from the Third Reich
Better data from a couple of billion years of evolution.

Surely there would be a competitive advantage for any bird, fish, dolphin or whale that could reduce the drag along its body by a simple surface treatment. Yet there is a remarkable paucity of dimpled bodies. Some fish have other than smooth surfaces, but usually they are bumpy or even spiked, and this appears on slow moving species. Fish are interesting in that there is a sort of Z like pattern from the edges of their scales, but whatever effect that would have had is largely offset by a thin layer of slime, which acts to fill in these discontinuities. Sharks seem to do just fine with skin much like sand paper.

On a somewhat larger scale, humpback whales have knobs on the leading edge of their fins that do appear to reduce drag. Other than that, biology seems to favor simple streamlining over complex surface treatments.
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