Opportunity Details

Details about the opportunity you selected and the mentor are shown below. It is your responsibility to contact the mentor to discuss collaborating with them this summer. If your mentor invites you to submit an application, you can access that from the front page of this site. Upon completion of the application, it will be sent to the mentor for approval before being passed on to the Summer Scholar Selection Committee, which will make the decisions.

Faculty Information

Chris Rogers

crogers@tufts.edu

Professor

P: (617) 627-2882

F: (617) 627-3058

Address:

474 Boston Ave

Medford, MA 02155

Affiliated Institutions:

Engineering

Associated Departments:

Mechanical Engineering

Web Sites:

http://www.tufts.edu/~crogers

Opportunity:

Do the new Tech Suits actually reduce drag on swimmers?

Summary:

This is a 2-person project and will be aimed at developing and testing an experimental setup to measure the drag and other factors of the new Tech Suits used by Olympian Michael Phelps and others to break all the swimming world records (and 15 Tufts records). There is a lot of discussion in the swimming community as to how much of a difference the suits are making psychologically versus physically. The goal of this project is to measure the drag, buoyancy, and other factors and determine the role that the actual material design has on the improved swim records.

Contact Via:

E-mail

What is the timeframe for this research opportunity?

June - Aug

Prerequisities for students?

fluid mechanics, experimental methods (ME 18) and labview experience

Responsibilities for students?

Development of the experiment, collection and analysis of data.

Area(s) of Research:

Mechanical engineering

sports engineering