Submitted on January 24, 2006 by Willie McBride

Question: Hi,

I'm a sophmore in high school, and for a science class we are required to do a science fair project where we pose a question and attempt to answer it through experimentation. Any ideas on what kind of experiment i could do? I'm an avid racer (in the 420, FJ, and 29er classes in particular), so I was thinking of doing an experiment on optimum mast rake or maybe technique for attatching flow to a stalled sail. Although these are my two main ideas right now, I have no restrictions on what i
can experiment, so if you have any other ideas please let me know. Is there any way to measure the speed at which flow attacthes to a sial?

If you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate the advice. Thanks a lot!

Sincerely,
Willie McBride

Answer: Dear Willie,

Thanks for your inquiry. Experiments to test mast rake or attached flow are quite complex. I'm not sure there'd be much you could do to design an experiment around those topics. You might check with a wind tunnel (University of Maryland has one) to see if you could use some of their existing experimental data to do your own analysis.

Here's another idea: You could test the effect of different hiking positions. Build a hiking bench as a balance beam and put weights on one side, then hike out in different positions on the other side. Is straight leg hiking better than droop hiking? You could also test the impact of crew weight: If you increase crew weight from, say 120 lbs to 140 lbs, how much extra hiking power do you generate?

One neat thing about this is that you could have people at the science fair hike out and see how much hiking power they generate. (Just don't let any grownups with bad backs try it.)

Let me know what you end up doing...

Good luck,
Bill Gladstone
www.northu.com
ph - 203 245 0727

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