
Ever watch someone jumping rope really fast? you probably noticed that the top of the arc of moving rope bends away from the direction the rope is moving in. So did two scientists. After using high-speed video, a rope-skipping robot, and computer modeling of jump rope fluid dynamics, they have suggestions for building a better jump rope: lightweight, short and smooth, with a small diameter.
“The aerodynamics of jumping rope,” Jeffrey M. Aristoff and Howard A. Stone, Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Dave Mosher’s plain-language write-up has an added bonus: a video of Professor Jiang Li jumping rope at Princeton.
“Solved: The Aerodynamics of Super-Fast Jump Ropes,” Dave Mosher, Wired
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