Actually, clothing contributes to bouyancy, especially at first when trapped air enhances it. A study verifies this with a winter outfit (including shoes) being better than a summer outfit, which in turn is better than a swimsuit.
That’s a very interesting study. Apart from the issue of clothing buoyancy, I notice that only about 25% of adult males were able to float motionlessly in a swimming pool with their airway clear of the water, although most of the adult females could. This seems inconsistent with several assertions upthread that humans are natural swimmers. If you can’t even float without drowning, you need to be trained to swim.
–Mark
Short, sweet and to the point.
BTW you must have noticed it too, how we keep going over and over on this subject of why more people don’t swim, thread after thread, year after year?
[Seinfeld]What’s up with that?[/Seinfeld]