How Water Slides Work - Stuff You Should Know

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Water slides have been around in one form or another since the Romans. But back then they didn't know what they had on their hands. With the birth of the waterpark in the 1970s, these rides have only gotten more extreme, leading up to the birth of today's water coaster. All this and more in today's episode.

Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1

(00:01)

Welcome to you Stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff works

dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry slowing us down.

And this is stuff you should know the podcast. That's right.

(00:22)

The water slide addition. Yeah, man, you like water slides.

Who doesn't? Nobody? Pretty much? Water slides are point man.

I used to go to uh Whitewater here in Atlanta

growing up. I haven't been in years and years to

a water park. Yeah. I would like to go, though,

Oh you're gonna go again. Yeah. I mean I don't

(00:44)

know the Whitewater because I don't know if it's any good.

I mean, it was great when I was a kid,

but now that I'm adults, I'm a little more discerning

with my needs. I see, you know, reading about some

of these water parks, I'm like, they're really doing it right. Yeah,

like the one in Kansas City. Yeah, what's it called

the well? I think it's a German name, isn't it. Yeah,

um schlitterband. And you know why it's German? Why because

(01:05)

German invented the water sign. Okay, I was looking this up.

I was looking all over for the first water slide. Um,

I think I found it. I want to hear all right,

And it was fairly recent too, Like I thought water

slides probably the four hundreds. Yeah, this is what I

would have guessed. Nope, I was way off. Well, this

(01:27)

one article I found says that the very first time

people did this was people aqueduct workers in Rome and Egypt.

They would, you know, to get from one point to another,

quicker would just slide down the aqueduct. Very smart. So

they think that's where the idea may have come from.

But well, there's also plenty. There's a lot of natural

(01:47)

water slides around the world to um that people take advare.

So I would imagine it started out like even maybe

before then. Yeah, where someone finally said though, hey, this

is nido, I can make money off of it, and

let's build one just for this purpose. And what I

found was nineteen three with Herbert selna Um, who was

(02:11)

actually an American. I thought he was German. Um. Uh, well,

this was in Minnesota. You invented the water toboggan slide

and they got to use it two days out of

the year. Um. And I think it was more it

was a sled type deal. And then I saw one

in England or in the nineteen thirties or so, where

(02:33)

it was the same deal. It was like a little

flat bottomed boat that you know, you in England they

still had on their full they weren't even like in

bading gear. They're like in there, they're full suits and

monocles and frocks sitting in this boat. So it's basically

a little flat bottom boat that would go down to

slide and then skitter across the water like the log

ride or something like that. Yeah, that's that's the water slide,

(02:54)

except way more dangerous, I would guess, because it's the

uh yeah, exactly. So I thought the providence was even

more recent than that. I thought it was the nineteen seventies.

Well that's where the water park was born. Okay. I

ran across mentions of water slides, original water slides in

the United States from like the seventies the earliest I found. Well,

(03:16)

you'll find the Minnesota one. You didn't find the Minnesota

Well here's did you read that story? The history of

water parks? Yeah? Man, you came up with this great

article from grant Land, which is a publication that has

some really good long form articles, but this one in

particular was really cool. Uh. And it is what is

it called? Do you remember the wet stuff that we

(03:38)

have a play on the right stuff? Yeah, like the

original astronauts of water parks. Well, in this case, um

George Malay in nineteen seventy four was sort of the

inventor and main thief that built the water park by

stealing a bunch and this out. Now there were water

(03:59)

slide because he would travel all over the country and

they'll be like, oh, there's this concrete water slide, but

that was all it was at the time. It was

like this hill with like three curvy concrete slides cut

into the side of it. Yeah, and you heard chuck right,

he just said concrete. The original man made water slides

were made of concrete. Yes, I've been on those. Did

(04:21)

it not like tear your skin up? No, it was

really Yeah, it's like a concrete swimming pool. Um, yeah,

which I mean like if you ever come in contact

with the bottom of it, it hurts. Well. No, there's

a lot of water first of all, and then these

are the ones you needed the little mat to sit on. Okay,

that makes sense. It's gonna stay like you just stand

up in the bottom of your swimming trus to be

(04:43)

totally shredded. So Malay had the original idea when he

went to a wave pool um in Alabama and said

this is awesome. He would see a water slide and

say that is awesome. He would see like a little

kid's water thing, say that is awesome. Him, let's bring

it all together. Let's bring it all together. And then

(05:03)

he was the guy who made Wet and Wild. Yeah.

Well he was originally of the creator sea World and

then left the Sea World in nineteen seventy four. Who's

fourced out? Yeah. I get the feeling that he was

not an easy guy to work with. No Supposedly in

this Grantland article, supposedly his he had red hair and

his face would get just as red when he'd start yelling,

(05:24)

which was a lot. Yeah. So he said, let's bring

this all together. Um, let's go um Inland to where

people don't have access to beaches and things, which makes

sense human maide beaches. Yeah, with these wave pools and uh.

He was rebuffed by investors at first because they were like,

no one's gonna pay the swim you big dummy. Yeah,

(05:46)

that's really stupid idea. Yeah, that was like the initial

response that he got. Yeah, and like I can kind

of understand that no one had ever tried it before.

Swimming and bathing was one of those things that like

you just went to the beach and it was free. Yeah,

So the idea of bringing the beach to people was

kind of lost on on the early investors, not all

of them. He managed to raise like three million bucks. Yeah,

(06:07)

or they'd be like community pools and things, but not

like a theme park, just without without roller coasters and rides.

People thought he was nuts, so he built it anyway.

In Orlando. He called it Wet and Wild um, because

he said, apparently in a meeting, I want it, it's

gotta be the name's gotta be wet and wild, and

they're like, how about that. We're ready to go home

(06:28)

pretty much even yelling at us all day. Um. The

center piece of Wet and Wild was the wave pool. Yeah,

which you know it's like that that well, it's a

wave pool. It's a pool that creates waves, which was

a huge deal. And that's the one that's what he

saw Indicatur Alabama vour right, that's the thing that kicked

it all off, and like you said, it was the centerpiece.

(06:48)

So when you came into Wet and Wild in Orlando

on International Drive, um, that was the first thing you saw,

and it was meant to kind of bull you over

a little bit, like, oh my gosh, it's a it's

a human made beach. Trying to discontinue my use of

man made by the way. Oh really, Yeah, sure, it's

really easy to say too, because you grow you grow

(07:11)

up saying that, but yeah, human made it's harder to say.

It's harder to remember. So I'm training myself. Good job.

I'm gonna start that too now. But you're gonna say

human made, right, maybe you and Terry Gross So uh,

the the idea was pretty great, but it didn't take

off at first. Um he lost about four grand in

his first year because people were used to roller coaster

(07:35)

parks and they were used to go go, go, go

go at those things. He was trying to talk parents

into kicking back on the lounge chair by the wave

pool while the kids partied, and the parents were like yeah.

The parents who went though were like this is kind

of awesome, actually yeah, But getting them there at first

(07:55)

was a lot harder than he anticipated. Yeah. Um. He

figured out though that there was kind of a too

to a dual attractiveness to um a water park depending

on your age. So like, if you're a teenager, you

wanted something fast and scary and fun and sure, sure,

(08:16)

but you wanted something that you wanted thrills and spills

and chills. Right, if you're a parent, by the time

you're at this place, it's probably very hot. You've probably

already been to Disney World or whatever, and you are tired,

worn out, but your kids still has tons of energy,

so they're running around. You don't feel like running around.

(08:37)

You feel like sitting in a way pool, You feel

like sitting on a lounge chair, or you feel like

and this is an idea he ripped off from I

think um Sri Lanka or something like that river, the

lazy river that was the stroke of genius. It seems

like that apparently sealed the fate of wet and wild

was introducing this lazy river where you don't even have

(08:57)

to propel yourself. You just get in this river or

and you're gently pushed along by the current, along and along,

and you can just chill out and not think about

anything in the nice cool water on a hot day

in Orlando. Yeah, and apparently when he had stole that idea, Um,

the guys, the humans building this thing, was like, well, yeah,

(09:19)

well we can build a river like you get in

one and get out the other. And he's like, no,

no, no no, no, this thing is fully enclosed. You never

have to get out if you don't want to write.

He's like, do I have to explain the concept of

infinity to you? So they build it shaped like the

infinity signer got fired. But and yeah, because in the

middle they'd all just bumped together. They glutinated traffic jam.

(09:40)

So I mentioned him stealing. Uh, everyone was stealing because

after this water parks started opening up. It was the seventies.

Everybody was stealing. Yeah, all over the country. And they

they stole their names. Like every water park in the

world has the same like twenty words over and over

to describe their rides, and they all just from each other,

(10:01)

like flumes and raging and wild and splash and storm

and typhoon or in his case, the Kama Kaze. Well, yeah,

that was the first really big in the States, at

least I think he stole it from somewhere overseas from Japan.

Actually it was Japan, that's try, which is appropriate and

(10:22)

highly inappropriate to have named it the kama Kaze then,

but he uh. It was the the first really tall

water slide in the United States. And the way that

it was allowed to be made really tall is because

he used fiberglass, which revolutionized water parks because again they

would use skin shredding concrete that had some real serious

(10:42)

like structural limitations, like you had to build it into

a hill. She had to build build a hill, and

then you had to build the water slide into the hill.

With fiberglass, it was like just build straight up into

the air and you're fine, Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah,

and the Kamikaze was the first one. Plus they built

it and situated it in a water park in a

way where you could see that thing from miles away,

(11:03)

and it was basically like a beacon, like, come check

this out, you twelve year old crazy person. Yeah, they

call it a skyline feature. It's the same reason that

the biggest roller coasters are going to be situated near

the highway most times. So it's basically self made advertising

and marketing. Um. So they also found that they could

make a lot of money doing other things like selling concessions.

(11:24)

And at first they would put the concessions all, you know,

the lockers, because you're not gonna carry on money. But

then they said in this article that became the mother

of invention, and they were like, they invented the water wallet.

And they sold a lot of bathing suits because women

would come in their bikinis and get their bikini tops

thrown off in these some of these rides, So they

(11:44)

sold a lot of one piece bathing suits once people

got there. Um, and it was kind of genius. They

were making money hand over fist at a certain point.

And this is one of the reasons why I think

the seventies are possibly the greatest decade of all time.

The water park was established in the seventies. Yeah, so um,

(12:06)

these days there are some really really innovative um slides

going on and we'll talk about those later. Um, first,

let's take a break and then we'll get back to

like how water slides actually work. So, Chuck, I promised physics,

(12:38)

and we're going to deliver on physics. If you have

listened to our roller Coaster episode, you'll probably get a

lot of this. But the basic premise between a roller

coaster and a person on a water slide is virtually

the same thing. Like when you're on a water slide,

you have when you're at the top of you're just

(12:58)

sitting there, you like a slinky, have a lot of

potential energy, and then once you shove off, that potential

energy is translated into kinetic energy and gravity starts to

pull you downward. That's right. And when you're traveling on

a relatively straight slope, the force of gravity pushing down

on your body is counteracted by the force of the

(13:20)

slide pushing up, and you're you're going kind of slow. Sure,

but if you take that slide and move it more

from the horizontal to the vertical, it's still pushing you forward,

but it's not counteracting gravity any longer. It's just basically

allowing you to drop very quickly from a high place

(13:40)

to a lower place. Yeah, and uh aided the whole time. Um, well,

I guess combating friction, you're aided by the water. Of course,

that's gonna help the friction not take hold and you

won't scrape your little bottom on the concrete water slide

any longer because they're sending tons and tons of water

constantly down these water slide. Yes, And the the higher

(14:02)

the drop and the steeper the grade, the less friction

is allowed to generate because the less the slide is

counteracting directly the force of gravity. So you can get

going pretty quick. Yeah, And I remember on some of

these tall slides that would have like a big drop

and then a little small hill, like I remember leaving

(14:23)

my butt leaving the slide. The concrete sly Yeah mean, no, no,

this is but when they were fiber class at this point.

But um, yeah, like zero friction because I'm airborne slightly.

And they had missteps along the way, like sending kids

off into the world, launching them from these water slides.

And so they especially with the Serpentine slide, which all

(14:46)

of a sudden you have angles introduced to the physics

um and curves and inertia, and so they realized, we

gotta build these walls up pretty high on some of

these curves because your inertia, you're working against your own inertia.

It's take in one direction and then boom, you're taking

a hard left turn. Your body still wants to go

that direction exactly. Slide says no, no, you're going this

(15:08)

way now, so it adds a whole other sensation to it,

not just the downward fall, but a change in velocity too. Yeah.

So they raised these side walls and then eventually some

of them were so extreme that they just said that

you were you have to be in a tube altogether, right,

completely enclosed, which is also a feature, like they have

something that have like, uh, well it'll be dark and

(15:30)

they'll have lights inside the tube and you know they've

got seat them up over the years, right, they clean

up real nice. So, um, well, that's pretty much the

physics of water slides. There's not a whole lot else

to know about it. Well, there's the water break. That's

another feature. Okay, so you made mention of like, um,

people being thrown all over the place. There's a story

(15:51)

in that grant Land article where George Malay was showing, um,

I guess an investor or something like that, this new

slide and had one of his teen age employees go

down the slide and at the bottom of the slide,

um the collecting pool. Well before the collecting pool are

supposed to be a dip which is filled with water

and that serves as the water break. And then you've

(16:12)

got the collecting pool, the place where you spill out into,

and that's supposed to slow you down even further. Apparently

the design of this slide was such that this little

teenage kid wasn't really slowed down with the water break

and skipped across the collecting pool onto the concrete in

front of the investor who's like, Um, I don't think

that's supposed to happen, right, You may want to check

(16:34)

your numbers. Yeah, I think that may have been a

sled maybe not a sled slide. Well, with a sled slide,

you would guess that there's even less friction. You know,

you need to have a longer water break going on.

But the cool thing about the water break is that

was invented by somebody who's actually one of the foremost

(16:54)

water slide designers working today, guy named Jeff Henry. Jeff

Henry's family owned like a campground in the sixties, I

think Texas in Texas, and um, one of the things

they had going for this campground, because you know those

are usually pretty boring places, was a slide, A regular slide, yes,

(17:15)

from the second floor. I think of one of the

cabins down, not a water slide at this point, um,

until Jeff added the water break feature and that became

like a standard feature for all water slides. Started out

on a regular slide. Yeah, And he's the guy that

basically saw what Malay was doing and said I can

(17:36)

Like he wasn't too impressed with Malay and said, I

see what you're doing, but I can do this a

lot better. And I think his parks today are some

of the coolest ones. Right. Well, yeah, he's working. Um.

He co owns um the one in Kansas City, the

one with the German name. Yeah, I don't know why

the name won't stick in my head. Schlitterbon, Schlitterbon. You

don't know why that doesn't stick. I mean it's so memorable, sure,

(18:00)

schliter bond Uh. That's the one that has the tallest

one in the world now, right, Yeah, So the tallest

one in the world is called or, which is German

for crazier insane. And how high is it? A hundred

and sixty eight feet and seven inches tall. The second

place one is called Kilimanjaro. It's in Brazil. It's a

(18:21)

hundred and sixty four The third one is also in Brazil.

It's called Insano. It's a hundred and thirty five ft

that's really tall. Man. Oh yeah, do they have little

elevators for those? Do you know? Are you? I think

you have to climb, which makes the whole thing even scarier.

Really yeah, that's to me the worst part about the

water park is, uh, the and it even puts it

(18:43)

this way in this article. The potential energy is you

climbing steps. That's how you develop the potential energy. And

the higher up you go, the higher you climb, the

more potential energy you have, which means the more is

released in transferred to kinetic, which is scary, but you're right,

it does built up like as you go. I imagine

you're like, man, I've climbed a lot of steps here,

(19:04)

I can see really really far. One of the cool

things about that grant Land article too, by the way,

Chuck is at the top. Rather than a photo, they

have like a gift that's a p o V video

of going down. It's pretty neat and I believe that

is also one that uses is that a water coaster?

So that is the latest and greatest um feature going

(19:27)

is Someone at some point said it was probably uh,

what's his name, Jeff? Jeff did he invent the water coaster?

He said, you know, this is neat, but it would

be really neat if you go up and down and

you didn't just uh go down and stop and maybe

a little hill here and there. But he invented I

guess the water uh was it called the water cannon,

(19:50)

water blaster, the water blaster, which is exactly what you think.

It's a lot of water when you start to go

up that hill to shoot you up that hill, right,

it's it's um, you know, like the chains that clink

you up on a roller coaster. It serves the exact

same purpose. So uh with the addition of these water

blasters that that move you along, um, it's just completely

(20:14)

opened up the field of of water slides. It's just

no longer using gravity to push you down. So um,

chuck with with a water slide like it's This article

makes a pretty good analogy that when you build a

water slide, you're basically it's the same process as putting

together like a matchbox track. It's the them the fiber

(20:38)

last pieces are designed. For the most part, there's companies

that design water slides. Four water parks. Rare is the

water park that designs its own slides. But Jeff Henry

and um the co his co owner of um Schlitterbond

in Kansas City. Yeah, what is the guy's name? Do

(20:58)

they design these together? Yes, John John School, he's the

co owner's name. So they'll dream it up and then

work with another company who will actually put it together

or build it and then put it together. These two, yeah,

they do their own designs, but for the most part

of you in a water park or something, you'll contract

out the whole thing, design, building, implementation, all that stuff

a fun job. But this is one of the things

(21:19)

that makes these two um some of the foremost designers

is because they're they're not only owners of water parks,

they're designing it themselves. They're testing it out themselves, and

they're really putting a lot of thought into the water

features that they're coming up with. Let's spend his life

since the sixties, you know, Yeah, this is passion alright.

So like you said, they are dozens and dozens of

(21:42)

fiberglass pieces that just fit together. Like you said, like

a little car track, you gotta raise lip on one

end and a little sunken step and just slide them

together and bolt them together boom, And what you want

is to have a very smooth um single slide feel

to that on your autom half. Yes, you know, once

you're butt like bumping against every you know, every time

(22:04)

there's a new section and then you have some steel

that holds the thing up and there you go. You've

got the world's tallest water slide. Um. One of the things, though,

besides physical harm that you have to combat as a

water park owner is also p Yeah. Sure, have you

ever seen that South Park or the water the water

(22:25)

park there, The concentration of PE is so much that

it flips over and there's a chain reaction and everything

turns to pe and like they're trapped in this water

park and can't get out because everything is p it's

so gross. Do they have measures in place for pin

now or is it? Um? Well, just massive amounts of

(22:46)

filtration and yes, chemicals just like in a pool, exactly right.

But um, one of the ways that you combat this

is to keep water circulate all the time. You don't

want it to stagnate. And the other um, but honus

of having water circulating all the time is you don't

have to just use water once to go down the

slide and then flush it down the train. A water

(23:08)

slide is basically a closed circuit, and actually most water parks,

or at least several of the features in the water

park are closed systems themselves, so like the water will

circulate through several different parts of the park in a

closed system. Right, all right, Well we'll talk a little

bit more about these pump hounds is and how that

all works right after this break. All right, Josh, you

(23:46)

mentioned um pumps. This water doesn't move itself, you know,

I mean gravity helps on the way down. Yeah, I

guess it does. You need to get it up right

to the top of the slide her for this all

to work correctly. And to do that you just use

some pumps. You put a pump at a smart location,

say a collection sump, and in most cases this is

(24:10)

the pool that's at the bottom of the water for

the um water slide that they fall into, right, and

that water, that water is collected and sucked out and

run through a filter, which is pretty simple. It sounds

like filters for water parks. I'm sure, I'm sure get

more technologically advanced than this, but at their basis, they

(24:33)

um the waters run through a layer of sand and

a layer of gravel, and the edges of the sand

and the gravel pick out fine particulate matter, hopefully proteins

from urine and um. The water, the clean water, the

cleaner water is run through the other end and up

to the the water slide and then down again. Yeah.

(24:56)

And most of these slides, especially the ones where you

have to work water all the to the top, have

um one way valves or check valves. And that means

at the end of the night, when they turn everything

off and clock out and go to the local beer

and pizza joint to I'll hang out, because that's what

all water park employees do, right, It's like summer camp.

They the water stays at the top. It stays in

(25:18)

that pipe. It doesn't flow backward because then you would

have to work to get it all pump back up

to the top again every morning. Yeah. So it's a

one way system and it just stays ready to go

when they turn it on at the beginning of the day.

They take their advil and wipe the crust from their

eyes too. Pizza. Uh. They turn on that pump switch

and the water is just right there at the top,

(25:39)

rady to be uh. Squirted back out. Um. Backwashing is

very important feature. If you ever worked at a pool

or owned a pool, you know how to backwash and

that is another uh sanitation method which you will reverse

the flow of water through the filter and backwash it

and it moves back through it cleans all the crud

(26:01)

that the filter caught out. Yeah, and then pumps it

out into the sewer system exactly. It's a very important part.

It doesn't pump it back out into the collection pool

because that would be so gross. That's right. And they're

always pumping new water in there too, because you're losing

a lot of water throughout the day as well. Yeah,

people's bathing suits carry that water away evaporation. Sure, all

that stuff. And as much pe as they're adding, they

(26:23)

still need to add water, which is good. Um. Did

you read the bit on Action Park? Yeah? Man, so

this is pretty cool. It's I read and watched that

documentary about a year ago, and uh, it was amazing.

I can't say enough about the Mashable. Um, did they

actually do the documentary? I think they hosted it. Okay.

(26:46)

It was a park in New Jersey, the deadliest amusement

park in the history of the world. Apparently. Yeah, it

was called Action Park, and it was from the seventies

till I think, and um, it had such a horrible

track record of causing injuries and just being insanely flagrant

with Yeah, pretty much that had the name Traction Park. Um.

(27:11)

And there's a legend that the Smashable Articles or was

it the New York Post, which now I'm questioning the

veracity of this legend. But um that Action Park bought

ambulances for the local township because they used them so much. Well,

it's pretty cool. If you watch the documentary interviews, Uh,

(27:31)

it details the features of the park, which are all, um,

you seem like you were teetering on the edge of

injury at all times. And um, but when you entered.

They interviewed a lot of people that were now adults

that went there as teenagers and they were like, Action

Park was the best thing ever. Well, and the reason

why it wasn't just because they didn't care about your safety. Yet.

(27:54)

They had really cool rides to Like, they had a

water slide that made a pleat loop and that's not

water slides don't do that normally. Yeah, it was a

tube and if you look at this thing they have

video of someone going through it. Um, it seems like

the way Action Park was laid out, it wasn't like

it was a sort of piecemeal like this thing looks

(28:17)

like it was just built in a parking lot. Uh.

And it was a complete and closed tube and you

would just go down, do one loop and get spit

out the other end. And it didn't always work great though.

It's a problem. Yeah, it didn't always spit you out

the other end. You might get stuck, broken or whatever

in the in the loop. Yeah, it seems pretty great.

They're like everyone across the board had fond memories. Um.

(28:40)

And I know in the seventies we all like pat

ourselves on the back for having you know, we didn't Yeah,

we didn't have bicycle helmets and like we were all

dangerous and our parents didn't care. But um, that sort

of was the heyday, you know, like when kids were

just left to their own devices and apparently everyone that

worked there it was just like a really fun time.

Like the cards are party in, the kids were partying.

(29:03)

It was just a good old time at Action Park.

So they're bringing it back now, right they are. After

this this documentary went viral. Um and it's like a

web documentaries. I don't think it's feature length or anything

like that. But um, the once they went viral, the

former owners were like, oh, okay, well I guess there's

still demand for Action Park, so they bought back the

(29:26)

old Action Park and it's the family business, right Yeah.

And the the they basically said the recent owners who

they sold it to back in the nineties made everything

way too safe. So they've said about making the rides

more dangerous, which is nuts. Yeah, they're probably walking that

fine line, especially these days litigation and kids feeling like they're,

(29:49)

you know, in peril. Yeah, it makes more exciting. I

came across another article, um that basically said if you

are worried about roller coasters, you should be way more

worried about water parks. Yeah. The death rate is much higher,

isn't it. Yeah, the in the injury rate, the incident rate,

for sure. So um, there was It was a study

in New Jersey, which is where Action Park is. Um.

(30:12)

But the studies between two thousand and seven and two twelve,

So this is while Action Park isn't even operating, so

it's not adding to these statistics. But one fifth of

all amusement park accidents in New Jersey between those years

where water park attractions, whereas only like thirty nine incidents

were due to roller coasters, So like a hundred and

twenty out of like five hundred something where things like, um,

(30:34)

drownings in a collection pool or just injuries on a

water slide, that kind of stuff. So if you're afraid

of roller coasters, you should be way more afraid of

water slide. Yeah. The one thing that I read in

that article that made sense to me was they said that, um,

with a roller coaster, you're generally looking at some sort

of a malfunction, mechanical malfunction that causes injury. But water

(30:57)

is unpredictable. It's not on a track, and sometimes you know,

it does whatever the heck it pleases, that does whatever

it wants, and maybe someone's size and weight will contribute

to it in such a fashion where um, it's yeah,

you're taking its humble and breaking a leg or something.

Good times. I can't wait to go again. I got

one last step for you once you got There are

(31:19)

twelve water parks in North America. You know how many

in the rest of the world. Wow? Really, yeah, crazy,

it's the North American tradition. It is um. I used

to love the Lazy River. What I would do is

my friends and I would play hide and go seek

in the Lazy River, which was fun. You basically get

(31:40)

like five or six dudes because we didn't play with girls.

You know, we were scared of them, and one of

them would kind of hang back and the other ones

would get in and then you'd wait like thirty seconds

or whatever, and then you jump in the Lazy river

and they'd have a little head start and you would, Uh,

we would spend hours due playing hide and go seeking

this thing because you would us creep along behind some

(32:02)

uh you know, some big fat guy on a on

a raft. You would just sort of hide behind him

and see your friends swim by. And you know, you

can swim with the current go super fast, so there

are all sorts of techniques of hiding and evading and capture.

It was pretty fun. That is pretty cool, man, that's awesome.

I think we would spend like half our day doing

that because we realized standing in line for a water

(32:23)

slide is for the birds. Thinks will make our own fun.

Look at girls, but not talk to them. They're scary. Uh,

you got anything else No, and this is when I

was in my thirties. By the way, if you want

to know more about water slides, go visit our podcast page.

It's got tons of stuff, including this podcast, so the

(32:46)

circle of life will be complete. You can also type

water slides into the search bar how stuff works dot Com.

And since I said that, it's time for uh listener, man,

I'm gonna be all this from our buddy, Murph Tyler Murphy.

All you had to say was Murph. Yeah, he's our

our friend. It's a teacher and um sends this stuff sometimes. Yeah,

(33:08)

in part time put putt golf course worker. And he

wrote in about slinky's he said, he guys, as you know,

I teach history and science, and in science class I

do use a slinky to demonstrate concepts and physics that

they may find hard to understand. What I do is

I hold up as slinky with a class to see,

um it is uncompressed or slinked. And I asked the

(33:29)

students what they think will happen if I drop it,

and response is always it will fall Mr Murphy up

or down. Though, kids, then I drop it and it

naturally falls, and they look at me like I'm unfit

to teach. Uh. Then I use their cell phones or

my cell phone and record the drop in slow motion

to demonstrate the fact that, uh, information of an object

(33:50)

state takes time to permeate. This is what you were

talking about, remember, uh, and what this means for the slinky?

Um to know that when it's dropped, it takes time

to move as a wave through this ink. The slinky

until the status quo of the slinkys ends are matched,

stays closed. That science maybe political science. Basically, one end

(34:10)

of the slinky moves and follows by the other end

remains motionless, floating until the information reaches the motionless end

and says you can fall now, which is what we

talked about at the end there. I like how he

put it. Yeah, so you do this in class and um,

kids are amazed and delighted. I'm sure. Yeah, finally ste

the slow motion camera fon. That's from Tyler Murphy and um,

(34:31)

thanks Murphy. Yeah, thanks for all the support man. Yeah.

As always, if you want to show your support for

me and Chuck, you can tweet it to us at

s Y s K podcast. You can join us on

Facebook dot com slash stuff You should know You can

send us an email of support to Stuff podcast, to

how stuff Works dot com, and as always, you can

support us at our home on the web Stuff you

(34:52)

Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands

of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com?

Mhmm