Scientific Table

Scientific Summer

One thing I did this summer that I enjoyed and has science behind it is windsurfing. I really enjoyed this water sport, because to be successful at it you need to be both good but also to have luck on your side from the wind. I Chose this sport because without science it wouldn’t be this developed, it wouldn’t exist. Wind surfing might seem simple, “it’s simple we have had sails for thousands of years, it’s easy to make a surfing board with a sail attached to it”. Well that’s were lots of people make mistakes.

For wind surfing we need wind, to know where the best winds are during a day we need meteorology which is a part of science. To move the board and the person on it you need a sail that harnesses and uses the wind. For that sail to be successful it need to be durable, but light, but still strong and enough not to fall apart from strong winds and gusts, to make such a sail you need to combine element you can find on the periodic table and make such a material. After the sail there’s the board which has to, be light and movable by a small sail but still buoyant, and floatable. Which means scientists and engineers have to experiment to find and create the right boards.

The sail works using one of Newton’s 3 laws, that every action has an reaction, in this case the action is the wind blowing and pushing the board and reaction is the that board moves forward carrying the sailor.

As you can see such a simple idea such as wind surfing is pretty complicated and there is a lot of science behind it.