ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

George Malcolm Laws

George Malcolm Laws was a scientist who studied how animals move and swim through water. Imagine you're in a swimming pool and you're trying to swim fast. You might notice that you move differently depending on how you move your arms and legs. George Malcolm Laws wanted to understand how animals like fish and whales move through water and what makes them so good at it.

To figure it out, he did lots of experiments using special cameras and tanks of water. He would put different animals in the tanks and film them swimming around. Then he would watch the footage and try to figure out what made them swim the way they did.

One thing he discovered was that animals use their fins and tails differently depending on how fast they want to go. For example, if a fish wants to go really fast, it will use its tail to push itself forward like a propeller. But if it just wants to swim around slowly, it might use its fins to help it steer.

Laws also studied how different parts of an animal's body move. He discovered that the shape of an animal's body can help it move more efficiently through the water. For example, a dolphin's body is streamlined, which helps it swim really fast without using up too much energy.

Overall, George Malcolm Laws was really good at studying how animals move through water. His discoveries have helped us understand more about how animals adapt to their environments and how we can design better machines that move through water.