who will get wet more somone running or walking in the rain?

Question

keep in mind we often have to increase our wiper speed in our cars the faster we drive

Answer 1

It depends how far we have to go. It's really a mathematical
equation. You will have to ask a math major for the answer.

Good question though!

* * * Support good answers! By submitting a "thumbs up" rating
for a good answer you help reward good answerers with up to 50
additional points should they be selected as the best answer. * * *
_
_
_
_
_

Answer 2

We can actually figure this out with some vector calculus. Let's consider a very simple model of a person, as a box with dimensions 0.5x0.5x1m, and let's say the rain is falling straight down with a flow rate of f m^3/s/m^2 = f m/s. The flow through the surface of the person will be the vector sum of their velocity vector (presumably normal to the rain, though this is not true if the rain is not falling straight down) and the flow rate f. Let's say their velocity is v. The flow rate is then given by the vector (v,f). How much actually intercepts the surface? Well, this again should be a vector product - the dot product of the unit normal vector of the surface and the velocity. I.e., if the surface is parallel to the rain, then no rain will intercept it. The surface vectors we're considering are for the top (0,1), front (1,0) and back (-1,0). Simple enough - so we can find the flow through each surface as, respectively: f*0.25m^2, v*0.5m^2, -v*0.5m^2. We could consider other kinds of surfaces than a box, if we were more willing to do complex integration (but we're not). Negative quantities don't interest us, so we ignore the last term, giving us: f/4 + v/2. So this is how wet you'll get per unit time. Now let's consider someone traveling a distance d, which they can do in time d/v, meaning they'll get d/v*(f/4+v/2) wet, or df/4v+d/2. Now let's compare v and v/2. For v/2 we'll get this wet: df/2v+d/2. This is clearly > df/4v+d/2, so our simple model tells us that you'll get more wet if you walk slowly. QED. However, f is probably << v (no more than inches per hour, certainly, or 7e-6 m/s), so the second term (d/2) will probably dominate and it won't really matter.

Answer 3

Running increases the effective surface area of your body, because not only will the rain hit you from the top but also more on the front of your body since you run into the raindrops. When walking, you only get hit by raindrops on the top surface of your body and whatever is sticking out, like your feet when taking steps.

Because of this, running gets you wet faster and over more areas of your body. Even though walking will keep you in the rain longer, it doesn't increase the amount of water that hits you since you do not run into raindrops falling in front of you.

Answer 4

I saw a myth busters once that solved this. They actually found that walking and running make you about the same amount of rain. The person running just gets wet faster than the person walking. The person walking just takes longer to walk the same distance

Answer 5

Who Gets Wetter?
You end up drier running in the rain than walking.
(From "Who Gets Wetter?", Season 1, episode 1)
Confirmed
When retrying the test in actual rain it was conclusively proven that the running test subject got less wet than the walking test subject. The use of artificial rain in the original test led to a false negative.

Mythbuster busted their own bust. So yes, its better to run in the rain.

Answer 6

running. I saw this on Mythbusters a few months ago and I'm pretty positive that the person they tested this on got a little more wet running because he was coming into contact with more raindrops than the guy who walked. They were still pretty close though.

Answer 7

That is so funny! I argued with a friend about this in grade school! He said by running you run into more rain drops, I said that by walkihg you get hit by more raindrops because you are spending more time in them.
We never did resolve it and I guess the guy who put the SPAM answer isn't going to be any help either.
Good luck.

Answer 8

If you ever watch the show "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel, they actually did this one twice. The first time they got that it was better to walk and the second time they found that it was better to run. I guess they said the second time they did it, the experiment was a better representation so it actually is better to run than walk.

Answer 9

depends on the direction of the rain drops. but think about it...if you step outside for 5 seconds as opposed to 10 seconds...who gets more wet? Good question!

Answer 10

Someone running gets more water on them then someone walking. We always want to run to get out of it faster but this only makes it worse!