Thank you. That was really informative and cool.
Theoretical physics aside, this suggests that the guy who’s responsible for starting and stopping the ride did this. Therefore he would have to climb into and and then back out of it while it was at full speed. I call shenanigans.
Granted, it does say “a ride” rather than “the ride”, so maybe the guy who ran the Tilt-a-Whirl came over and did this on his break, but it doesn’t seem relevant to the story to identify him as an “operator” unless he was working the ride in question.
Spindletop at SFoT is now gone. It was removed in 1989 to make way for the Texas Giant rollercoaster. (Or the souvenir photo booth, to be more exact.)
Are ANY of the original “barrel rotor” rides still operating? It seems like the sort of thing that Kennywood or Knoebel’s might keep around for giggles, but I can’t remember seeing one there, either.
All of the centrifuge rides I’ve seen have had the operator seated in the middle. It would be incredibly irresponsible for him to do this, but it’d be possible.
How would the operator return to the center?
Presumably by climbing something like a ladder. It’d be tough at first, but would get easier as you got “higher”.
Alternately, the ride may be designed to automatically stop after some period of time. I’d expect it would also be designed to stop if the operator left his post* (during my three summers as a ride operator, this was the case), but traveling carnival rides don’t always have that great an emphasis on safety.
*The rides I operated had a switch and a foot-pedal. After buckling all the kids in and giving the safety speech, I’d flip the switch and then step on the pedal. That’d make it go for two minutes, and then stop. If I stepped off the pedal, it’d also stop. If business was slow and the kids were nice, I could give them a longer ride by stepping off the pedal and then back on (resetting the clock to 2 minutes).
IIRC from the couple of times that I’ve been on a “Gravitron” type ride, the operators station was in the center and it revolved along with the ride. So yeah, I guess it ***might ***be possible for the operator to do what was described. But as Chronos said, it would be incredibly irresponsible for him to do this.
I’ve never experienced the Gravitron style rides before, so until I watched a few clips on YouTube I didn’t realize the operator was already in the midst of things. On reading the OP I had something in mind like JBDivmstr described at Astroworld, based on my own experience 30 years ago on the Finnish Fling at Worlds of Fun in KC.
Those older rides make the Gravitron seem quite pokey by comparison, although it’s probably about the same RPM, just a different diameter. But seriously – seats, headrests and belts? What is this world coming to? Back when I was a kid…
I’ve never been to Kennywood, but I don’t remember Knoebels ever having a Gravitron or similar ride, at least as long as I’ve been going there, circa 1990 or so.
I thin the good doctor really hit it on the head here. Gravitron type rides have a cone section shape so that when you load the ride you stand straight up and have to fall backwards 20 degrees or so from vertical to lean, later lay, on the padded wall. With the ride at full speed, a person standing on this angled wall could very well have the combined felt gravity direction straight down through their feet.
Not so, as posters have pointed out, for cylindrical spinning rides, where if you try to stand actual sideways to experience the centrifugal force, you’re going to fall over actual down because the 1g of gravity you started with is still pulling on you.
Someone asked who still has these rides: Canobie lake park in Salem, NH still has an enclosed cylinder shaped, non-tilting, floor-dropping-out-from-under-you spinning thing called the Turkish Twist.
If I were there I’d bring some paint and make the biggest spin art ever.
So here’s a thought experiment: what if the radius of the rotor were less than the height of the person? Say, for example, the rotor has a 8’ diameter, and a 6’ tall person tries to stand horizontally? I imagine it would require a MUCH faster rotation rate, since the top third of his body would be pulled “up” while the bottom 2/3rds would be pulled “down”. Assuming a uniform mass distribution, only the mass from lower third of his body would account for the force towards his feet. The forces on the top 2/3rds would cancel each other out.
You would calculate the g’s at the radius measured from center of rotation to the body’s center of mass. In the above case, the radius is ~1 foot (6’ person standing with feet at 4’ radius, assume they’re standing horizontal). So yes, compared to a rotor with a 10-meter diameter, you’d have to spin it a lot faster. 5-meter radius, minus 3’ height from the dude’s feet to his CoM means you calculate the g’s at a radius of ~4m, or 12 feet, compared to your case’s 1 foot. IOW, you’d have to rotate 12 times as fast.
Yeah, we used to have Fort Frontierland, which was a cut-rate WoF for those of us not wanting to drive 2-3 hours to hit Wof or Six Flags in STL, here with the Mad Man’s Mixer. It was one of the barrels and was my favorite ride there. Some things about it:
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The operator was not in the room, he was above it all on a sort of catwalk that surrounded the entire room at the top. Bystanders could look in at the people inside.
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The room did not tilt once the rotation started. Those inside perceived it to do so, but it did not. Many a classmate argument started over how exactly it did work.
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The floor was diamond plate, painted. Once the ride started and there was enough force to hold you to the walls, the floor dropped out from under you. The walls, as stated above, were some sort of rubberized material that kind of reminded me of the material some cubicle walls are covered with.
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I never witnessed anyone standing up in it, but people were always crawling around on the walls, despite warnings from the operator not to do so. I remember a time when some kid (whom I did not know) crawled down closer to the floor but couldn’t get back up as the ride stopped and got his foot caught between the floor and wall. It was a big deal, with several park personnel called in to figure out what to do. The ride was closed for the rest of the day because of that kid. I hate that kid to this day for shutting down ‘my’ ride.
I heard the NPR story and wasn’t sure it could be done. Until I saw this video. Not walking, but obviously horizontal.
Many years ago I rode one of these things at a boardwalk somewhere. Directly across from me was an old woman (I was about 12- she was 25-35). She was wearing some shiney kind of silk or polyester dress. When the floor dropped out she started slowly sliding out of her dress. It was all quite exciting for a while in my overheated, pre-pubescent brain. When she was almost completely out of her dress the increased friction from cotton panties and her skin stopped her slide and the floor came back up. But by then she was completely hysterical.
The coefficient of friction has held a strange and lasting fascination for me ever since.
Just when I thought I had heard of every kink…
I mean, essentially, friction is what it’s ALL about…
Two points (good Zombie, nice Zombie…)
“Asperities” is a cool word.
I’m sure this is understood and dealt with in the above analyses by the physicists, but when “standing up” isn’t there an instantaneous torque being resisted by your body? I can see it disappearing analytically in the g normal to the wall, I think, but would like to see that explained…
Or shown where I’m completely off base.
Shouldn’t be anything unusual once you have achieved a standing position. But during the period of transition from laying down to standing, your center of mass is moving toward the axis of rotation of the Gravitron, and you will be predisposed to fall in the direction of rotation; the faster you stand, the more pronounced this tendency will be. This is the same phenomenon that causes southerly winds in the northern hemisphere to deviate to the east (or northerly winds in the southern hemisphere to deviate to the west).