FOR KIDS: Smile! Dimples boost your mileage

Trucks covered with tiny indentations, like those on golf balls, experience less friction

Trucks covered with tiny indentations, like those on golf balls, experience less friction

By Sid Perkins

Web edition: May 28, 2013

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Drag Fighter

This teen?s wind tunnel tests showed that dimpling the surface of trucks could greatly reduce drag from friction.

Credit: Patrick Thornton, SSP

Part of the energy used to move a car, truck or plane is spent overcoming the friction posed by air. The force caused by that friction is known as aerodynamic drag ? and it can really hold a vehicle back. Over the years, researchers have developed ways to cut that drag. Now, an 18-year-old engineer has come up with a new approach. It?s specifically designed to boost the fuel efficiency of large trucks. And her solution: Just?cover its surface with?lots of tiny dimples.

Daniela Jimenez of?Preparatoria del Tecnologico de Monterrey in Zapopan, Mexico, presented her findings on May 13 in Phoenix, Ariz., at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. The Society for Science & the Public, which created the fair in 1950, still runs the competition. (SSP also publishes Science News and Science News for Kids.)

Visit the new Science News for Kids website and read the full story: Smile! Dimples boost your mileage.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350665/title/FOR_KIDS_Smile_Dimples_boost_your_mileage

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