The tipoff about the Greenland paddle design is how they built them: out of wood, with inlaid bone or ivory on the edges. If a Greenland stick is used correctly, the leading edge becomes exremely important. Any roughness at the leading edge destroys the flow over the blade, and kills the force it creates. The bottom line is, those folks knew what made their paddles tick. They couldn't describe it with a mathematical model, any more than we can, but at least they knew how they worked. As I have written before, here we are trying to explore space, and we still don't know how a canoe paddle works! Rob. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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