I can’t say it’s a question that I’ve thought about much, but apparently there was a great debate in science about whether a human would swim slower in syrup than in water. No less a scientific mind than Isaac Newton wrestled with this question, figuring that the more viscous a fluid, the slower a subject would move through it.

As you might imagine, the biggest problem in testing this hypothesis is filling a big enough container with syrup so people can swim a few lengths.

Some researchers from the Unversity of Minnesota, Minneapolis did just this, getting permission (involving 22 different kinds of approval from the university and city) to fill a 25-metre pool with 300 kilos of guar gum (the stuff in commercial salad dressing and ice cream). One of the researchers provided the quote that is the title of this post. Yummy!

Nature has a good article about the procedure and results. As it turns out, it’s pretty much a wash: As liquid gets thicker you get more drag because of friction, but you also generate more forwards force from every stroke. These effects cancel each other out. (This is only true for subjects of a certain size; microscopic creatures would find it much tougher going in thick liquids.)

The researchers also posit that the “ideal swimmer” would be a person with a body like a snake and arms like a gorilla. Let’s see you test that one out, docs!