Moments in a four Professor John D. Barrow or how a cosmologist
from Cambridge University, with a passion for bringing
mathematics to the general public, proved (in his spare time)
that the standard rigging set up for a rowing four or eight
really isn’t the right way to set up a boat if you want ©
MaxAlexander 2009 Rigging a four or an eight the standard way
makes no sense when it comes to making the boat go in a straight
line. This is the finding of University of Cambridge professor,
John Barrow. rigging, that is, no sideways wiggle in the boat as
it moves forward through the water. In basic terms, boat wiggle
occurs because the two parts of the stroke, the drive and the
recovery, the net force, are not the same so Barrow looked at a
line-up where these transverse forces would cancel each other
out. used in Italy in 1956 by a crew that went on to win gold at
the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In his paper entitled, Rowing and
the Same-Sum Problem Have Their Moments (Nov 2009), Barrow uses
mathematical calculations