Why are items carried by water in Minecraft slower than the player carried by water?

Question

Ive been building various monster grinders lately and using water flows to bring the items dropped to a collection point. I've noticed that the items pushed along by the water travel much slower than a player being pushed. Does anyone know why? Is it intentional?

Answer 1

Silly answer: The resources are being shoved along the ground and dragging on it (they're not floating, after all), whereas the player is at risk of falling over, so must walk with the current to keep their balance.

Actual relevant information: Note that resources move far faster in a water current on top of ice (faster than the apparent current!), and slower on soul sand. This indicates that the slowness of resources is mostly caused by friction. Maybe the player inherently "has less friction", and therefore moves faster.

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[I say "resource" rather than "item" to refer to dropped things because of the convention that "items" are those things-you-can-carry which are not blocks (so resources are both items and blocks), and Notch called them resources at least in the past.]

Answer 2

One theory, and most likely why, is that Notch wanted to make sure the player could move fast enough, faster than the items, so the player could collect them.