Science Questions

Again - Do you get wetter running or walking in the rain? Kieran

Lots of people responded to this question with some very good points:

If you run, you're more likely to splash in puddles, and so your ankles and shoes will get wetter by running - BUT, this assumes it's been raining for a while, and there are already puddles around.

Also, running on wet ground is much more likely to result in you falling over, when you will get very wet indeed!

Obviously, the exact conditions of the rain means that it's very difficult to give the best speed to travel through rain, but Ronaldo Menezes sent us a link to Doug Craigen's calculator to work out exactly how much rain would hit you for given speed and rain conditions.

We tried the calculator with Chris' values, and found that if he jogs at 2 meters per second through 200m of vertical rain falling at 5m/s, he will be hit by 30.4ml of rain, but if he goes at 3m/s - only 27ml of water will hit him.

September 2007