“SWIMSUITS THAT COPY THE SKIN OF SHARKS”

By: Yuan Madriaga

I. INTRODUCTION

Great White Sharks are stealthy hunters and the secret is in their skin. Shark skin
is covered by tiny flat V-shaped scales, called dermal denticles, that are more like
teeth than fish scales. These denticles decrease drag and turbulence, allowing the
shark to swim faster and more quietly. Olympian swimsuit designers have taken a
page from the shark’s playbook and created a fabric that mimics the exact proportion
of the shark’s denticles, hugely improving a swimmer’s speed.

Sharks are known for their jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth, but their skin also
contributes to their ferocity. It's covered with tooth-like scales—structures known as
denticles that make shark skin rough like sandpaper. For decades, scientists have
suspected these denticles make sharks faster and more maneuverable by disrupting
the flow of water over the fish and reducing any drag holding them back.

Now, scientists have fabricated the most realistic artificial shark skin yet. Their
findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology confirm that the structure can
improve swimming performance, and perhaps could lead to better swimming robots.

Harvard scientists say that they’ve managed to replicate one of the most
fascinating organs of the animal kingdom in a lab. Their finely-detailed synthetic
shark skin could make some of the fastest underwater robots around, and maybe even
one day grace human wetsuits or the hulls of ships.

Biomimetics, the practice of building machines that mimic the natural world, has
made enormous strides in the last handful of years. But while other research centers
focus on speedy, galumphing land robots, or super-precise aerial drones, Harvard
evolutionary biologist George Lauder’s domain is the sea. For the past 15 years, he’s
been building robots that resemble fish

II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

a. Will the swimsuit improve swimming performance?

b. Will the swimsuit inspired shark skin be allowed in swimming competition?

 c. Will it reduce drag?

III. EXPECTED OUTCOMES/HYPOTHESES

a. The swimsuit may enhance the swimmers speed thus improve swimming
performance.

b. The swimsuits have been found to improve performance, and permitting their use
in competitive swimming has been controversial, and led to changes in
regulations. People have gone so far as to label their use as "technical doping".
They were deemed to provide an unfair advantage to the wearer by Fédération
Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA), which led to a ban on all swimsuits
of a similar nature.

c. Drag reduction only occurs when the skin is attached to a flexible body. Human
bodies, which are far less flexible, receive no benefits at all from the surface of
the suit