Shark Skin Boosts Swim Speed And Cuts

Sharks swim faster because of their special skin. Through the learning of this, we created artificial human “shark skin” swimsuits to enhance our performance at water sports such as swimming. This innovation has not worked very effectively. According to the article, Shark Skin Boosts Swim Speed and Cuts Drag by Adrian Bishop it states, “Shark skin is coated in sharp scales, similar to teeth, called dermal denticles (or (placoid scales) that affect the flow of water to reduce drag and increase thrust.” The Speedo Fatskin II swimsuits aims to use the concept of shark skin to improve athlete’s swim times. Harvard University’s George Lauder says that “… the idea behind the high-tech swimsuit needs more consideration ...” He personally believes that this high-tech swimsuit is not similar to shark skin at all. He does think that Speedo can improve the swimsuit in other ways. Lauder believes …show more content…
Other aspects that play a role in enhancing the athlete’s performance in swimming is because the swim suits are tailored to easily maintain a straight or proper posture even if the athletes are tired. George Lauder and a Masters student, Johannes Oeffiner examined how shark skin reacts with water and the effect of its motion. They discovered that shark skin increases thrust.
They even performed an experiment where they “… bought fresh shark skin from a Boston market and removed parts, including the denticles, and attached to rigid aluminum foil. This was place in a flow tank, wiggled to mimic the movement of a fish and its speed measured.” The next time, they smoothed the denticles with sand and the foil model was set up again. The speed was measured exactly the same way it was