“A physicist has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain. If you run, you are out in the rain for less time, yet you run into more drops – so what is the optimal speed? Franco Bocci, reporting in the European Journal of Physics, now asserts that both wind direction and a person’s stature figure into the answer. In most cases, the general answer is to run as fast as possible; but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin. Prof Bocci is by no means the first person to address the problem, which is far more mathematically complex than it seems on the surface. In the 1970s, a number of papers came out in mathematics magazines debating the question, each more fully exploring the issues at hand.” w/ photo
