Students Win Race with Penguin-Shaped Submarine

By John Farrier in Science & Tech on Jul 9, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Students at the University of Quebec won a competition of human-powered submarines by basing their design on the body and movement of a penguin:

Team OMER, composed of students from the school’s Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal, drove two propellerless submarines to victory (winning $1,000 per race in the process) using thrust delivered from a pair of carbon fiber oars resembling the wings of the tuxedoed bird.

OMER 6, a one-person submarine, achieved a speed of 4.916 knots (5.65 miles per hour), beating the previous 4.642-knot (5.34-mile-per-hour) speed record for subs without a propeller. The two-person OMER 7 sub hit a top speed of 5.133 knots (5.90 miles per hour).

Link

Tags: penguin, submarine, University of Quebec

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

Foreigner1
Jul 9th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
If you go to the site of that university and you check out the footage in part 2 out of 4 of the newsbulletin, you can see how it works- bit like the Mirage-drive. It looks fascinating.
Foreigner1
Jul 9th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
oh, and it helps to understand some French…
Capt8ball
Jul 9th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Fabulous, I love penguins.

But… I saw a thing on I think the BBC yesterday about puffins on the island of Skelmor (?).

Imagine penguins, all great underwater with their wings and catching the fish and all.

Then they break the surface and FLY!

And have the gayest beaks in all of ornithology.

The penguin is dead, all hail King Puffin.

Keep track of the comments with

Comment RSS

Lijit Search

The latest from NeatoBambino: