Jumpin’ Jack and Lazy Jim, twins, emerge from a fancy restaurant only to find all the valets have split and a heavy rainstorm lies between them and their car, 100 yards away. Jumpin’ Jack bets Lazy Jim that if he runs and Jim walks, he will arrive at the car not only faster but drier. Jim accepts the bet, arguing that Jack’s broad chest will run into more raindrops than will hit Jim on the top of his slow-moving but small head. Who wins the bet? If distance and rain density are important to figuring the answer, please provide us with a handy wallet chart so we may know when to be nimble and when not. Meanwhile, I’ll place my bet with Jack. –Ryan Kuhn, Chicago
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You’re obviously a sensible young man, which is more than I can say for some of the bozos out there. According to Discover magazine, Alessandro De Angelis, a physicist at the University of Udine, Italy, calculated some years ago that “a sprinter racing along at 22.4 miles an hour does get less wet, but only 10 percent less wet, than a hasty stroller (6.7 miles an hour).” Conclusion: running isn’t worth the trouble.
Not to keep you in suspense, the answer is no. If we ignore aerodynamic effects, we can show mathematically (but won’t) that while you’ll collect many fewer head drops running rather than walking, you’ll get exactly the same number of chest drops, regardless of the speed at which you travel. Bottom line: you’ll be a lot wetter if you walk.
So there you are. The differences are larger than the numbers suggest because many drops on the “walking” papers dried before I could count them. My guess is that the number of drops is exactly proportional. If you’re out twice as long, you get twice as wet.
