My daughter Emily and her husband Ryan (pictured) will soon be enjoying a massive upgrade to their above-ground pool.
I am hoping to see him jump off the roof of the house and perform a Maori manu (meaning “bird”) dive like these World Champ bombers in Auckland, New Zealand.
A team of fluid dynamic and biomechanics experts at Georgia Tech ingeniously deployed a quarter-pound, 7-inch high ‘manubot’ to work out how these daredevil divers create splashes exceeding a height of 30 feet. See Mastering the Manu—how humans create large splashes (published May 19 by Interface Focus) for their findings. Figure 1a tells the story: By contorting their body into a V shape, the Manu masters create an air cavity that creates a ‘Worthington’ jet-splash—named after the discover who delivered this discourse on the physics phenomenon in 1894.
“It’s very difficult to master, it can be quite dangerous, and it requires millisecond control.”
– Pankaj Rohilla, co-author of Mastering the Manu
On second thought, I will back off on my son-in-law going dive bombing—best this be done by Maoris or manubots.