How to design a rollercoaster – with Brendan Walker
Ri Science Podcast
00:00
Inverting Playground Slides
I was invited by an ITV science show to design the world's first inverting playground slide. The key is can we do it safely, obviously? So let me tell you a little bit about my approach to this and generally how rollercoasters work. We have potential energy at the top. This is basically we need height. This creates our potential energy. As the rider comes hurtling down the slide, that potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. And that kinetic energy gives us the velocity we need to be able to create the centre-preital force. But of course we can't go too fast, we can’t go beyond 5g. If we have a very large
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