Incidentally I am the most successful living physicist so you should you trust me especially but it should be obvious to everyone that bullets do sink in water

but what if you reduce drag by 1000 per cent?

I don't follow, if you reduce drag by 100% then there's no drag at all, is not this so? If you increase drag by 100% then it's doubled, you reduce it by 50% it's halved etc. If it has 10 times less drag then what they mean is drag is one tenth of what it would normally be, or it has been reduced by 90%. I do not fathom (no pun) where the 1000% came from.

Typo, it should be 100% not 1000%.

"There's a well-known theory in this field, that the drag force on an ideal object, with a free-slip surface, will fall to zero," says Dr Klaseboer.

but what if you reduce drag by 1000 per cent?

I don't follow, if you reduce drag by 100% then there's no drag at all, is not this so?

It's the same kind of semantic nonsense that gives us phrases like "5 times less expensive than...", "three times slower..." etc.

> Drop a 2-centimetre-wide metal ball into a deep pool. [...] Do the maths and it turns out that this ball experiences ten times less drag than a solid object with the same shape.

The only two knowns of the initial metal ball is that it's metal, it's ball shaped and presumably solid since not otherwise specified. And the only specified characteristics of the second "object" is that it's solid and has the same shape. So the second object in question is also a solid metal ball.

So a solid metal ball has 10x less drag than a solid ball?

There is absolutely no other differentiation between the first part of the experiment, which is supposed to have 10x less drag, and the second part, which should be the control. From this description I would do this experiment by dropping 2 identical solid objects shaped like a ball and made from metal into water and one magically has 10x less drag.

Something's up with semantics in this article. I did the math and it does not check out.

The two balls are the same, except for one having a superhydrophobic surface (due to chemistry or heat), that is the difference.

One falls through the water, normal drag & all, the other is surrounded by a layer of air and has a lot less drag, approaching 0.

https://en.wikipe..._paradox

Íf it works with a water vapor bubble in water it should also be possible to make it work with a air plasma bubble in air. Which brings us to almost zero drag air travel.

Thanks Ojorf for the clarification, from the experiment description this wasn't clear to me.

When the ball hits the water it boils a small amount of water immediately around it, creating a layer of water vapour. At the right combination of ball and water temperatures this layer becomes stable, so the ball is completely encased in the gas...

Russians know and utilize it for years (Shkval torpedoes)