Some lame maths project

[globesurfer]

i got this really lame maths "talent quest" thing that i HAVE 2 do because my teacher insists on all of us doing it blah blah.

i chose 2 do which fin systems, board width, length, height, shape, and tail size are the best and which work best with eachother. im sure lots of you knoiw, but i need 2 work out the maths behind it. now how does fins and swallowtails come into maths dammit?

[Roy Stewart]

Yikes! You are doing a lifelong maths project!

Or possibly one which will take several lifetimes.

Not only that, you are combining it with ethics (asking what's 'best').

I wish you the best of Kiwi Luck!

[Roy Stewart]

Perhaps you could do the 'psychology of wave measurement' i.e explain the reasons why surfing is the only known sport where there is no accepted and definable system of measurement in spite of the fact that measuring systems exist.

[globesurfer]

lifelong? no way. not by trying, just the maths behind it, if there is such thing. teacher says there is... pfft

[Roy Stewart]

lifelong? no way. not by trying, just the maths behind it, if there is such thing. teacher says there is... pfft

Of course your teacher is right because there is maths behind everything including personal tastes and feelings. Theoretically everything can be reduced to mathematics, but if you want to actually get some results then you might have to narrow your field of enquiry a lot. How on earth do you expect to prove mathematically what the exact relationship between different board shapes and fin configurations is? There are so many variables involved and such a small amount of hard data that you would be unlikely to make any headway at all. Where would you start? What, mathematically speaking, does a thruster setup do compared to a singlefin setup? Just answering that question would be a major challenge, and the answer, even if you could find it, wouldn't even scratch the surface of your question. For a start, how a fin behaves depends upon the input from the rider. How do you express the subtleties of rider input mathematically, or the variations in wave shape? On top of this you have an infinite number of variations of any general fin configuration.

In order to get mathematical results it is necessary to conduct strictly controlled experiments in a test tank, changing one variable at a time and measuring the changes. The trouble with this pursuit is that it doesn't resemble actual waveriding very accurately, nor does it tell us what is 'best' (which is part of your question). What is 'best' in surfing is what makes us feel good, and mathematically defining that is a major hurdle!

If your teacher thinks that it is possible for you to make any meaningful headway in this major, all encompassing question of yours, then he or she is definitely misinforming you. Have you seen or read any physics essays on the subject of fin thickness? Lift? Drag? Toe in? Foil proportion? Fin planshape proportion, tip turbulence, or any other fin physics topic? If you had you would realise that each one of those topics is a not only a huge subject, but that there is considerable debate about them amongst those who are qualified to call themselves experts. For example, the simple subject of fin thickness (a very tiny part of your overall question)has been debated by experts at Swaylock's now for years, and there are still two diametrically opposed camps!

Most of the time those who are most qualified to know, come back to testing fins in a surfing situation . . . and they still come up with different solutions!

On top of all this, if your project is a 'creative mathematics project' then what are you doing asking for the answer on a plate? You should be working out the answer from mathematical first principles!

Schoolteachers often assume that surfing is a really basic sport for dodo's and that therefore the physics of surfing is really simple. In my experience a lot of schoolteachers are lower case! Another schoolteacherly assumption is often that everything has already been discovered and all you have to do is go and look it up (perhaps doing a mathematically 'creative' walk on your way to the library). This is also bunkum of the first order.

If you like I can come up with a feasible mathematical surfing topic for you (maybe).

[meister]

maths shud be shot.

[globesurfer]

maths shud be shot.

amen