Let’s say someone constructed an indoor swimming pool on the moon, in an earth-atmosphere, pressurized (1atm) room. How would swimming be different there? I assume that you would still float or sink with the same buoyancy, as the relative weight of water to your body weight would be in the same proportion (and, therefore, the weight of the displaced water would produce an upward force proportional to your weight as it would on Earth), but what about other aspects, such as stroking through the water, diving, etc.? (and please correct me if I’m wrong about my assumption)
You could certainly get a lot higher jump into the pool, but you’d still land with the same speed you took off with (mostly), just like on Earth, but would splashes be bigger (and cooler–a canonball would be great!), and would you sink down farther?
Yes, the net effect of buoyency would not change, since gravity affects both you and the water. (Also think about it in terms of why you float in the first place; you’re mostly water, but just enough other stuff to make you slightly less dense than water.) However, so long as your muscles are still used to earth-normal gravity, you should be able to pull yourself almost completely out of the water, like a dolphin. (Maybe some Olympic-class swimmers could realy dolphin.)
As for jumping into the water, given that the accelaration on the surface of the moon is approximately one-sixth of that here on Earth, you can jump from six times the height you would here on Earth. For instance, jumping off of a 5m board, you could get close to 10m/s here. To acheive the same velocity, you would need to jump off of a 30m board on the moon. Also, the time of the jump would change by as much. (I.e. it takes you ~1sec to jump from 5m here on Earth; it would take you ~ 6s to jump 30m on the moon.)
Lemme know when you get this set up. I wanna play!
Yes, because the mass of the water is still the same, but the restoring force is 84% less - in other words water that is pushed aside comes back six times more slowly.
Sweet, I could totally do my “Parting the Red Sea” trick while waiting for tofergregg to land in the water. It would only hurt 1/6th as bad as falling into an empty pool here on Earth.
