Friday, March 25, 2011
We already knew that
A rather cute bit of research is showing up in all the web science pages today. Guinea hens (upscale chickens) adopt a special 'striding' gait when walking on slippery surfaces. Humans should adopt the same gait.
This may be news to the researchers in South Carolina, but it's not news to Northerners who walk a lot. For that matter it's not news to Northern drivers either. Same overall trick in all cases. Keep the body mass moving as smoothly as you possibly can, and direct the feet straight downward as much as possible. Bend the knees and flatten the feet so that the feet never have to pull or push much, thus taking advantage of static friction.
More specifically, half of the SC advice is good: don't shuffle. Shuffling is all forward-backward push-pull, thus constantly staying in the range of dynamic friction. But the other half is badly phrased. In a stride (as commonly understood) the forward heel strikes the ground while the leg is pushing forward. Guaranteed to break whatever static friction is available, guaranteed to fall.
Frankly I'm surprised that chickens have bothered to develop a special gait for slippy. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to birds, but as far as I've noticed they just don't spend any time on ice. They can fly, after all. And when they do have to walk on slippery surfaces, they have claws. ¶ 10:43 AM
This may be news to the researchers in South Carolina, but it's not news to Northerners who walk a lot. For that matter it's not news to Northern drivers either. Same overall trick in all cases. Keep the body mass moving as smoothly as you possibly can, and direct the feet straight downward as much as possible. Bend the knees and flatten the feet so that the feet never have to pull or push much, thus taking advantage of static friction.
More specifically, half of the SC advice is good: don't shuffle. Shuffling is all forward-backward push-pull, thus constantly staying in the range of dynamic friction. But the other half is badly phrased. In a stride (as commonly understood) the forward heel strikes the ground while the leg is pushing forward. Guaranteed to break whatever static friction is available, guaranteed to fall.
Frankly I'm surprised that chickens have bothered to develop a special gait for slippy. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to birds, but as far as I've noticed they just don't spend any time on ice. They can fly, after all. And when they do have to walk on slippery surfaces, they have claws. ¶ 10:43 AM
