When I was in college from 1989-1994, I lived at home about 3.5km from the campus. For the first few years, I cycled to and from, but a number of things got me out of the habit; such as the desire to socialise with alcohol close to the college in the evenings, the ease with which I could hitch lifts from college staff in the mornings, and the rain.

Latterly, I just blamed the rain. With my tongue firmly in my cheek I proposed "Ó Hanlon's Law" (not to be confused with Hanlon's Razer -- we don't talk to that branch of the family):

The amount of rainwater you gather in your clothing as you make your way along the street is proportional to the square of the speed at which you're moving.

Meaning, for example, if you move twice as fast in the rain, you will get 4 times as wet.

That's as far as I got -- no mathematical rigour or anything like that. It just felt that way. A bald statement that no one was going to be arsed to falsify.

Until now.

Ó Hanlon's Law is now officially dead:

theconversation.com/walk-or-ru…

Walk or run in the rain? A physics-based approached to staying dry (or at least getting less wet)

You have certainly experienced this situation before. Let’s approach the problem from a physics perspective and try to calculate the amount of water that will fall on you based on your speed.

^{The Conversation}