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Brainstorm Answer
01/02/2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. We recently posed the following Brainstorm:
You're outside and rain begins falling, with wind from behind. Will you get less wet if you
walk or run to get to shelter?
Here's what some of you said:
My name is Lynn Meyers. I heard this on North Country Public Radio. And I say you'd get just
as wet whether you walked or you ran. That's my answer.
Name is Joe Trujillo... Roswell, NM. And the answer, if I'm not mistaken, is that you will
get less wet if you walk as opposed to running in the rain.
Yeah, Bryan, this is Roy Anderson. Cookville, TN. The same amount of raindrops would strike
you whether you ran or walked, so it wouldn't make any difference.
Who's right? In their book, "Why Do Buses Come in Threes: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday
Life," Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham state that a person of average build, walking away from
the rain at a speed no faster than the horizontal speed of the rain makes more sense than
running full tilt. Because the wind is blowing from behind you, some of the rain will hit
your back as well as your head and shoulders. If you run faster than the rain is falling, the
additional rain hitting your front will more than make up for the loss of rain hitting your
head.
Maybe, Bill Christiansen of Freemont, Nebraska - who had the right answer - has the proper
perspective:
"In the meantime, I usually just carry an umbrella if it looks cloudy, or just keep out of the
rain."
Thanks to everyone who wrote or called. The Weather Notebook is produced with help from Subaru
of America and The National Science Foundation.
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