https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-7JheCh5GoWater slides are awesome.They're kind of like a roller coaster, but instead of you being strapped into a vehicle, you physically are the vehicle,and completely at the mercy of the laws of physics.So what are the physics of water slides?Well, the slide behind me is known as the leap of faith, and you're going to see why.And the first thing to consider with a slide like that is energy transfer.Whenever something physically moves, there's some kind of energy exchange going on.And in this case, it's energy that takes your body from the top to come shooting out the bottom at an alarmingly fast and rather wedgie-producing speed.When I climb the stairs up there, I'm turning my body's chemical energy into gravitational potential energy.And that's calculated by the mass of my body times by the acceleration due to gravity times by the height to the top.
>>17009746So now, when I launch myself off the top of this slide, the force of gravity will start accelerating me down,turning all that newly gained gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy.And it's that that shoots me out the bottom.So, do all riders go down at the same speed?Well, remember those experiments where you would drop two balls, one's heavy and one's light, see them land at the same time, showing how gravity accelerates them at the same rate?Well, does that happen with this too?Chris Moneymaker, how you doing?Hey, Liv.Eating my ice cream.What do you want?Uh, why don't you wait?Come on, really?Look, it's the science, OK?I just need to find someone who's about double my weight.240.Speaker 01 Perfect.I'm 120.So we're going to race down these slides.Do you think Ruth is going to be slower, faster, or the same speed as me?So why was I so much slower than Chris?Well, we've got to think about all the forces involved.Not only is there gravity pulling us down, but there's also friction between our bodies and the slide itself.And on top of that, there's drag from air resistance to think about.As we build speed, the frictional and drag forces build up and up until they reach an equilibrium with the downward force of gravity.The speed at which this equilibrium happens is known as our terminal velocity.And Chris's greater mass allows him to reach a greater terminal velocity than me.And so he goes down faster.As well as our body mass, there are many other complicated factors that can affect our final speed on a slide.Things like the shape of our bodies, the position in which we ride in, even the material of our swimsuit.In physics, there's something known as the coefficient of friction,which is the measurement of the ease with which two objects can move against each other.The lower the coefficient, the less friction there is between these two objects,and that's very important if you're all about achieving the fastest speed on a slide
What about trampolines and stripper poles?
