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How Water Slides Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry slowing us down.
0:17
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know the podcast. That's right.
0:22
Speaker 1: The water slide addition. Yeah, man, you like water slides.
0:26
Speaker 1: Who doesn't? Nobody? Pretty much? Water slides are point man.
0:33
Speaker 1: I used to go to uh Whitewater here in Atlanta
0:35
Speaker 1: growing up. I haven't been in years and years to
0:38
Speaker 1: a water park. Yeah. I would like to go, though,
0:41
Speaker 1: Oh you're gonna go again. Yeah. I mean I don't
0:44
Speaker 1: know the Whitewater because I don't know if it's any good.
0:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it was great when I was a kid,
0:48
Speaker 1: but now that I'm adults, I'm a little more discerning
0:49
Speaker 1: with my needs. I see, you know, reading about some
0:52
Speaker 1: of these water parks, I'm like, they're really doing it right. Yeah,
0:55
Speaker 1: like the one in Kansas City. Yeah, what's it called
0:59
Speaker 1: the well? I think it's a German name, isn't it. Yeah,
1:01
Speaker 1: um schlitterband. And you know why it's German? Why because
1:05
Speaker 1: German invented the water sign. Okay, I was looking this up.
1:09
Speaker 1: I was looking all over for the first water slide. Um,
1:13
Speaker 1: I think I found it. I want to hear all right,
1:16
Speaker 1: And it was fairly recent too, Like I thought water
1:19
Speaker 1: slides probably the four hundreds. Yeah, this is what I
1:23
Speaker 1: would have guessed. Nope, I was way off. Well, this
1:27
Speaker 1: one article I found says that the very first time
1:30
Speaker 1: people did this was people aqueduct workers in Rome and Egypt.
1:35
Speaker 1: They would, you know, to get from one point to another,
1:38
Speaker 1: quicker would just slide down the aqueduct. Very smart. So
1:42
Speaker 1: they think that's where the idea may have come from.
1:44
Speaker 1: But well, there's also plenty. There's a lot of natural
1:47
Speaker 1: water slides around the world to um that people take advare.
1:52
Speaker 1: So I would imagine it started out like even maybe
1:56
Speaker 1: before then. Yeah, where someone finally said though, hey, this
2:00
Speaker 1: is nido, I can make money off of it, and
2:03
Speaker 1: let's build one just for this purpose. And what I
2:06
Speaker 1: found was nineteen three with Herbert selna Um, who was
2:11
Speaker 1: actually an American. I thought he was German. Um. Uh, well,
2:17
Speaker 1: this was in Minnesota. You invented the water toboggan slide
2:22
Speaker 1: and they got to use it two days out of
2:24
Speaker 1: the year. Um. And I think it was more it
2:27
Speaker 1: was a sled type deal. And then I saw one
2:30
Speaker 1: in England or in the nineteen thirties or so, where
2:33
Speaker 1: it was the same deal. It was like a little
2:34
Speaker 1: flat bottomed boat that you know, you in England they
2:38
Speaker 1: still had on their full they weren't even like in
2:40
Speaker 1: bading gear. They're like in there, they're full suits and
2:43
Speaker 1: monocles and frocks sitting in this boat. So it's basically
2:46
Speaker 1: a little flat bottom boat that would go down to
2:48
Speaker 1: slide and then skitter across the water like the log
2:51
Speaker 1: ride or something like that. Yeah, that's that's the water slide,
2:54
Speaker 1: except way more dangerous, I would guess, because it's the
2:58
Speaker 1: uh yeah, exactly. So I thought the providence was even
3:02
Speaker 1: more recent than that. I thought it was the nineteen seventies.
3:05
Speaker 1: Well that's where the water park was born. Okay. I
3:08
Speaker 1: ran across mentions of water slides, original water slides in
3:12
Speaker 1: the United States from like the seventies the earliest I found. Well,
3:16
Speaker 1: you'll find the Minnesota one. You didn't find the Minnesota
3:19
Speaker 1: Well here's did you read that story? The history of
3:21
Speaker 1: water parks? Yeah? Man, you came up with this great
3:24
Speaker 1: article from grant Land, which is a publication that has
3:28
Speaker 1: some really good long form articles, but this one in
3:31
Speaker 1: particular was really cool. Uh. And it is what is
3:35
Speaker 1: it called? Do you remember the wet stuff that we
3:38
Speaker 1: have a play on the right stuff? Yeah, like the
3:41
Speaker 1: original astronauts of water parks. Well, in this case, um
3:47
Speaker 1: George Malay in nineteen seventy four was sort of the
3:51
Speaker 1: inventor and main thief that built the water park by
3:58
Speaker 1: stealing a bunch and this out. Now there were water
3:59
Speaker 1: slide because he would travel all over the country and
4:02
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, there's this concrete water slide, but
4:05
Speaker 1: that was all it was at the time. It was
4:07
Speaker 1: like this hill with like three curvy concrete slides cut
4:11
Speaker 1: into the side of it. Yeah, and you heard chuck right,
4:13
Speaker 1: he just said concrete. The original man made water slides
4:17
Speaker 1: were made of concrete. Yes, I've been on those. Did
4:21
Speaker 1: it not like tear your skin up? No, it was
4:23
Speaker 1: really Yeah, it's like a concrete swimming pool. Um, yeah,
4:27
Speaker 1: which I mean like if you ever come in contact
4:29
Speaker 1: with the bottom of it, it hurts. Well. No, there's
4:32
Speaker 1: a lot of water first of all, and then these
4:34
Speaker 1: are the ones you needed the little mat to sit on. Okay,
4:37
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It's gonna stay like you just stand
4:40
Speaker 1: up in the bottom of your swimming trus to be
4:43
Speaker 1: totally shredded. So Malay had the original idea when he
4:47
Speaker 1: went to a wave pool um in Alabama and said
4:53
Speaker 1: this is awesome. He would see a water slide and
4:55
Speaker 1: say that is awesome. He would see like a little
4:57
Speaker 1: kid's water thing, say that is awesome. Him, let's bring
5:00
Speaker 1: it all together. Let's bring it all together. And then
5:03
Speaker 1: he was the guy who made Wet and Wild. Yeah.
5:05
Speaker 1: Well he was originally of the creator sea World and
5:09
Speaker 1: then left the Sea World in nineteen seventy four. Who's
5:12
Speaker 1: fourced out? Yeah. I get the feeling that he was
5:15
Speaker 1: not an easy guy to work with. No Supposedly in
5:18
Speaker 1: this Grantland article, supposedly his he had red hair and
5:21
Speaker 1: his face would get just as red when he'd start yelling,
5:24
Speaker 1: which was a lot. Yeah. So he said, let's bring
5:26
Speaker 1: this all together. Um, let's go um Inland to where
5:30
Speaker 1: people don't have access to beaches and things, which makes
5:33
Speaker 1: sense human maide beaches. Yeah, with these wave pools and uh.
5:39
Speaker 1: He was rebuffed by investors at first because they were like,
5:42
Speaker 1: no one's gonna pay the swim you big dummy. Yeah,
5:46
Speaker 1: that's really stupid idea. Yeah, that was like the initial
5:49
Speaker 1: response that he got. Yeah, and like I can kind
5:52
Speaker 1: of understand that no one had ever tried it before.
5:54
Speaker 1: Swimming and bathing was one of those things that like
5:57
Speaker 1: you just went to the beach and it was free. Yeah,
5:59
Speaker 1: So the idea of bringing the beach to people was
6:02
Speaker 1: kind of lost on on the early investors, not all
6:05
Speaker 1: of them. He managed to raise like three million bucks. Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: or they'd be like community pools and things, but not
6:10
Speaker 1: like a theme park, just without without roller coasters and rides.
6:14
Speaker 1: People thought he was nuts, so he built it anyway.
6:18
Speaker 1: In Orlando. He called it Wet and Wild um, because
6:21
Speaker 1: he said, apparently in a meeting, I want it, it's
6:23
Speaker 1: gotta be the name's gotta be wet and wild, and
6:25
Speaker 1: they're like, how about that. We're ready to go home
6:28
Speaker 1: pretty much even yelling at us all day. Um. The
6:32
Speaker 1: center piece of Wet and Wild was the wave pool. Yeah,
6:35
Speaker 1: which you know it's like that that well, it's a
6:37
Speaker 1: wave pool. It's a pool that creates waves, which was
6:40
Speaker 1: a huge deal. And that's the one that's what he
6:42
Speaker 1: saw Indicatur Alabama vour right, that's the thing that kicked
6:45
Speaker 1: it all off, and like you said, it was the centerpiece.
6:48
Speaker 1: So when you came into Wet and Wild in Orlando
6:51
Speaker 1: on International Drive, um, that was the first thing you saw,
6:55
Speaker 1: and it was meant to kind of bull you over
6:58
Speaker 1: a little bit, like, oh my gosh, it's a it's
7:00
Speaker 1: a human made beach. Trying to discontinue my use of
7:05
Speaker 1: man made by the way. Oh really, Yeah, sure, it's
7:07
Speaker 1: really easy to say too, because you grow you grow
7:11
Speaker 1: up saying that, but yeah, human made it's harder to say.
7:14
Speaker 1: It's harder to remember. So I'm training myself. Good job.
7:18
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start that too now. But you're gonna say
7:21
Speaker 1: human made, right, maybe you and Terry Gross So uh,
7:26
Speaker 1: the the idea was pretty great, but it didn't take
7:28
Speaker 1: off at first. Um he lost about four grand in
7:31
Speaker 1: his first year because people were used to roller coaster
7:35
Speaker 1: parks and they were used to go go, go, go
7:37
Speaker 1: go at those things. He was trying to talk parents
7:40
Speaker 1: into kicking back on the lounge chair by the wave
7:44
Speaker 1: pool while the kids partied, and the parents were like yeah.
7:49
Speaker 1: The parents who went though were like this is kind
7:51
Speaker 1: of awesome, actually yeah, But getting them there at first
7:55
Speaker 1: was a lot harder than he anticipated. Yeah. Um. He
8:00
Speaker 1: figured out though that there was kind of a too
8:04
Speaker 1: to a dual attractiveness to um a water park depending
8:08
Speaker 1: on your age. So like, if you're a teenager, you
8:11
Speaker 1: wanted something fast and scary and fun and sure, sure,
8:16
Speaker 1: but you wanted something that you wanted thrills and spills
8:19
Speaker 1: and chills. Right, if you're a parent, by the time
8:23
Speaker 1: you're at this place, it's probably very hot. You've probably
8:26
Speaker 1: already been to Disney World or whatever, and you are tired,
8:32
Speaker 1: worn out, but your kids still has tons of energy,
8:34
Speaker 1: so they're running around. You don't feel like running around.
8:37
Speaker 1: You feel like sitting in a way pool, You feel
8:38
Speaker 1: like sitting on a lounge chair, or you feel like
8:41
Speaker 1: and this is an idea he ripped off from I
8:43
Speaker 1: think um Sri Lanka or something like that river, the
8:47
Speaker 1: lazy river that was the stroke of genius. It seems
8:50
Speaker 1: like that apparently sealed the fate of wet and wild
8:55
Speaker 1: was introducing this lazy river where you don't even have
8:57
Speaker 1: to propel yourself. You just get in this river or
9:00
Speaker 1: and you're gently pushed along by the current, along and along,
9:04
Speaker 1: and you can just chill out and not think about
9:07
Speaker 1: anything in the nice cool water on a hot day
9:09
Speaker 1: in Orlando. Yeah, and apparently when he had stole that idea, Um,
9:14
Speaker 1: the guys, the humans building this thing, was like, well, yeah,
9:19
Speaker 1: well we can build a river like you get in
9:20
Speaker 1: one and get out the other. And he's like, no,
9:21
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, this thing is fully enclosed. You never
9:25
Speaker 1: have to get out if you don't want to write.
9:26
Speaker 1: He's like, do I have to explain the concept of
9:29
Speaker 1: infinity to you? So they build it shaped like the
9:33
Speaker 1: infinity signer got fired. But and yeah, because in the
9:36
Speaker 1: middle they'd all just bumped together. They glutinated traffic jam.
9:40
Speaker 1: So I mentioned him stealing. Uh, everyone was stealing because
9:44
Speaker 1: after this water parks started opening up. It was the seventies.
9:47
Speaker 1: Everybody was stealing. Yeah, all over the country. And they
9:50
Speaker 1: they stole their names. Like every water park in the
9:53
Speaker 1: world has the same like twenty words over and over
9:58
Speaker 1: to describe their rides, and they all just from each other,
10:01
Speaker 1: like flumes and raging and wild and splash and storm
10:05
Speaker 1: and typhoon or in his case, the Kama Kaze. Well, yeah,
10:11
Speaker 1: that was the first really big in the States, at
10:14
Speaker 1: least I think he stole it from somewhere overseas from Japan.
10:18
Speaker 1: Actually it was Japan, that's try, which is appropriate and
10:22
Speaker 1: highly inappropriate to have named it the kama Kaze then,
10:25
Speaker 1: but he uh. It was the the first really tall
10:29
Speaker 1: water slide in the United States. And the way that
10:32
Speaker 1: it was allowed to be made really tall is because
10:34
Speaker 1: he used fiberglass, which revolutionized water parks because again they
10:38
Speaker 1: would use skin shredding concrete that had some real serious
10:42
Speaker 1: like structural limitations, like you had to build it into
10:45
Speaker 1: a hill. She had to build build a hill, and
10:48
Speaker 1: then you had to build the water slide into the hill.
10:50
Speaker 1: With fiberglass, it was like just build straight up into
10:53
Speaker 1: the air and you're fine, Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah,
10:55
Speaker 1: and the Kamikaze was the first one. Plus they built
10:58
Speaker 1: it and situated it in a water park in a
11:00
Speaker 1: way where you could see that thing from miles away,
11:03
Speaker 1: and it was basically like a beacon, like, come check
11:05
Speaker 1: this out, you twelve year old crazy person. Yeah, they
11:08
Speaker 1: call it a skyline feature. It's the same reason that
11:11
Speaker 1: the biggest roller coasters are going to be situated near
11:13
Speaker 1: the highway most times. So it's basically self made advertising
11:17
Speaker 1: and marketing. Um. So they also found that they could
11:21
Speaker 1: make a lot of money doing other things like selling concessions.
11:24
Speaker 1: And at first they would put the concessions all, you know,
11:28
Speaker 1: the lockers, because you're not gonna carry on money. But
11:31
Speaker 1: then they said in this article that became the mother
11:34
Speaker 1: of invention, and they were like, they invented the water wallet.
11:37
Speaker 1: And they sold a lot of bathing suits because women
11:39
Speaker 1: would come in their bikinis and get their bikini tops
11:42
Speaker 1: thrown off in these some of these rides, So they
11:44
Speaker 1: sold a lot of one piece bathing suits once people
11:47
Speaker 1: got there. Um, and it was kind of genius. They
11:50
Speaker 1: were making money hand over fist at a certain point.
11:53
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons why I think
11:56
Speaker 1: the seventies are possibly the greatest decade of all time.
11:59
Speaker 1: The water park was established in the seventies. Yeah, so um,
12:06
Speaker 1: these days there are some really really innovative um slides
12:12
Speaker 1: going on and we'll talk about those later. Um, first,
12:15
Speaker 1: let's take a break and then we'll get back to
12:17
Speaker 1: like how water slides actually work. So, Chuck, I promised physics,
12:38
Speaker 1: and we're going to deliver on physics. If you have
12:43
Speaker 1: listened to our roller Coaster episode, you'll probably get a
12:46
Speaker 1: lot of this. But the basic premise between a roller
12:49
Speaker 1: coaster and a person on a water slide is virtually
12:52
Speaker 1: the same thing. Like when you're on a water slide,
12:56
Speaker 1: you have when you're at the top of you're just
12:58
Speaker 1: sitting there, you like a slinky, have a lot of
13:01
Speaker 1: potential energy, and then once you shove off, that potential
13:04
Speaker 1: energy is translated into kinetic energy and gravity starts to
13:09
Speaker 1: pull you downward. That's right. And when you're traveling on
13:13
Speaker 1: a relatively straight slope, the force of gravity pushing down
13:17
Speaker 1: on your body is counteracted by the force of the
13:20
Speaker 1: slide pushing up, and you're you're going kind of slow. Sure,
13:24
Speaker 1: but if you take that slide and move it more
13:27
Speaker 1: from the horizontal to the vertical, it's still pushing you forward,
13:31
Speaker 1: but it's not counteracting gravity any longer. It's just basically
13:36
Speaker 1: allowing you to drop very quickly from a high place
13:40
Speaker 1: to a lower place. Yeah, and uh aided the whole time. Um, well,
13:45
Speaker 1: I guess combating friction, you're aided by the water. Of course,
13:49
Speaker 1: that's gonna help the friction not take hold and you
13:52
Speaker 1: won't scrape your little bottom on the concrete water slide
13:55
Speaker 1: any longer because they're sending tons and tons of water
13:58
Speaker 1: constantly down these water slide. Yes, And the the higher
14:02
Speaker 1: the drop and the steeper the grade, the less friction
14:05
Speaker 1: is allowed to generate because the less the slide is
14:09
Speaker 1: counteracting directly the force of gravity. So you can get
14:13
Speaker 1: going pretty quick. Yeah, And I remember on some of
14:15
Speaker 1: these tall slides that would have like a big drop
14:19
Speaker 1: and then a little small hill, like I remember leaving
14:23
Speaker 1: my butt leaving the slide. The concrete sly Yeah mean, no, no,
14:27
Speaker 1: this is but when they were fiber class at this point.
14:29
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, like zero friction because I'm airborne slightly.
14:33
Speaker 1: And they had missteps along the way, like sending kids
14:36
Speaker 1: off into the world, launching them from these water slides.
14:41
Speaker 1: And so they especially with the Serpentine slide, which all
14:46
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have angles introduced to the physics
14:49
Speaker 1: um and curves and inertia, and so they realized, we
14:53
Speaker 1: gotta build these walls up pretty high on some of
14:56
Speaker 1: these curves because your inertia, you're working against your own inertia.
14:59
Speaker 1: It's take in one direction and then boom, you're taking
15:02
Speaker 1: a hard left turn. Your body still wants to go
15:05
Speaker 1: that direction exactly. Slide says no, no, you're going this
15:08
Speaker 1: way now, so it adds a whole other sensation to it,
15:11
Speaker 1: not just the downward fall, but a change in velocity too. Yeah.
15:15
Speaker 1: So they raised these side walls and then eventually some
15:17
Speaker 1: of them were so extreme that they just said that
15:20
Speaker 1: you were you have to be in a tube altogether, right,
15:23
Speaker 1: completely enclosed, which is also a feature, like they have
15:27
Speaker 1: something that have like, uh, well it'll be dark and
15:30
Speaker 1: they'll have lights inside the tube and you know they've
15:32
Speaker 1: got seat them up over the years, right, they clean
15:34
Speaker 1: up real nice. So, um, well, that's pretty much the
15:38
Speaker 1: physics of water slides. There's not a whole lot else
15:41
Speaker 1: to know about it. Well, there's the water break. That's
15:43
Speaker 1: another feature. Okay, so you made mention of like, um,
15:48
Speaker 1: people being thrown all over the place. There's a story
15:51
Speaker 1: in that grant Land article where George Malay was showing, um,
15:55
Speaker 1: I guess an investor or something like that, this new
15:58
Speaker 1: slide and had one of his teen age employees go
16:01
Speaker 1: down the slide and at the bottom of the slide,
16:05
Speaker 1: um the collecting pool. Well before the collecting pool are
16:08
Speaker 1: supposed to be a dip which is filled with water
16:10
Speaker 1: and that serves as the water break. And then you've
16:12
Speaker 1: got the collecting pool, the place where you spill out into,
16:16
Speaker 1: and that's supposed to slow you down even further. Apparently
16:18
Speaker 1: the design of this slide was such that this little
16:22
Speaker 1: teenage kid wasn't really slowed down with the water break
16:25
Speaker 1: and skipped across the collecting pool onto the concrete in
16:28
Speaker 1: front of the investor who's like, Um, I don't think
16:32
Speaker 1: that's supposed to happen, right, You may want to check
16:34
Speaker 1: your numbers. Yeah, I think that may have been a
16:37
Speaker 1: sled maybe not a sled slide. Well, with a sled slide,
16:42
Speaker 1: you would guess that there's even less friction. You know,
16:45
Speaker 1: you need to have a longer water break going on.
16:47
Speaker 1: But the cool thing about the water break is that
16:50
Speaker 1: was invented by somebody who's actually one of the foremost
16:54
Speaker 1: water slide designers working today, guy named Jeff Henry. Jeff
17:00
Speaker 1: Henry's family owned like a campground in the sixties, I
17:04
Speaker 1: think Texas in Texas, and um, one of the things
17:08
Speaker 1: they had going for this campground, because you know those
17:10
Speaker 1: are usually pretty boring places, was a slide, A regular slide, yes,
17:15
Speaker 1: from the second floor. I think of one of the
17:18
Speaker 1: cabins down, not a water slide at this point, um,
17:21
Speaker 1: until Jeff added the water break feature and that became
17:27
Speaker 1: like a standard feature for all water slides. Started out
17:30
Speaker 1: on a regular slide. Yeah, And he's the guy that
17:32
Speaker 1: basically saw what Malay was doing and said I can
17:36
Speaker 1: Like he wasn't too impressed with Malay and said, I
17:38
Speaker 1: see what you're doing, but I can do this a
17:40
Speaker 1: lot better. And I think his parks today are some
17:42
Speaker 1: of the coolest ones. Right. Well, yeah, he's working. Um.
17:45
Speaker 1: He co owns um the one in Kansas City, the
17:49
Speaker 1: one with the German name. Yeah, I don't know why
17:51
Speaker 1: the name won't stick in my head. Schlitterbon, Schlitterbon. You
17:55
Speaker 1: don't know why that doesn't stick. I mean it's so memorable, sure,
18:00
Speaker 1: schliter bond Uh. That's the one that has the tallest
18:04
Speaker 1: one in the world now, right, Yeah, So the tallest
18:07
Speaker 1: one in the world is called or, which is German
18:10
Speaker 1: for crazier insane. And how high is it? A hundred
18:13
Speaker 1: and sixty eight feet and seven inches tall. The second
18:17
Speaker 1: place one is called Kilimanjaro. It's in Brazil. It's a
18:21
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four The third one is also in Brazil.
18:25
Speaker 1: It's called Insano. It's a hundred and thirty five ft
18:30
Speaker 1: that's really tall. Man. Oh yeah, do they have little
18:32
Speaker 1: elevators for those? Do you know? Are you? I think
18:34
Speaker 1: you have to climb, which makes the whole thing even scarier.
18:37
Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's to me the worst part about the
18:40
Speaker 1: water park is, uh, the and it even puts it
18:43
Speaker 1: this way in this article. The potential energy is you
18:47
Speaker 1: climbing steps. That's how you develop the potential energy. And
18:51
Speaker 1: the higher up you go, the higher you climb, the
18:54
Speaker 1: more potential energy you have, which means the more is
18:56
Speaker 1: released in transferred to kinetic, which is scary, but you're right,
19:00
Speaker 1: it does built up like as you go. I imagine
19:02
Speaker 1: you're like, man, I've climbed a lot of steps here,
19:04
Speaker 1: I can see really really far. One of the cool
19:08
Speaker 1: things about that grant Land article too, by the way,
19:10
Speaker 1: Chuck is at the top. Rather than a photo, they
19:13
Speaker 1: have like a gift that's a p o V video
19:16
Speaker 1: of going down. It's pretty neat and I believe that
19:19
Speaker 1: is also one that uses is that a water coaster?
19:24
Speaker 1: So that is the latest and greatest um feature going
19:27
Speaker 1: is Someone at some point said it was probably uh,
19:30
Speaker 1: what's his name, Jeff? Jeff did he invent the water coaster?
19:34
Speaker 1: He said, you know, this is neat, but it would
19:36
Speaker 1: be really neat if you go up and down and
19:38
Speaker 1: you didn't just uh go down and stop and maybe
19:43
Speaker 1: a little hill here and there. But he invented I
19:45
Speaker 1: guess the water uh was it called the water cannon,
19:50
Speaker 1: water blaster, the water blaster, which is exactly what you think.
19:55
Speaker 1: It's a lot of water when you start to go
19:56
Speaker 1: up that hill to shoot you up that hill, right,
20:00
Speaker 1: it's it's um, you know, like the chains that clink
20:03
Speaker 1: you up on a roller coaster. It serves the exact
20:06
Speaker 1: same purpose. So uh with the addition of these water
20:10
Speaker 1: blasters that that move you along, um, it's just completely
20:14
Speaker 1: opened up the field of of water slides. It's just
20:19
Speaker 1: no longer using gravity to push you down. So um,
20:23
Speaker 1: chuck with with a water slide like it's This article
20:26
Speaker 1: makes a pretty good analogy that when you build a
20:29
Speaker 1: water slide, you're basically it's the same process as putting
20:32
Speaker 1: together like a matchbox track. It's the them the fiber
20:38
Speaker 1: last pieces are designed. For the most part, there's companies
20:41
Speaker 1: that design water slides. Four water parks. Rare is the
20:46
Speaker 1: water park that designs its own slides. But Jeff Henry
20:50
Speaker 1: and um the co his co owner of um Schlitterbond
20:54
Speaker 1: in Kansas City. Yeah, what is the guy's name? Do
20:58
Speaker 1: they design these together? Yes, John John School, he's the
21:01
Speaker 1: co owner's name. So they'll dream it up and then
21:03
Speaker 1: work with another company who will actually put it together
21:06
Speaker 1: or build it and then put it together. These two, yeah,
21:10
Speaker 1: they do their own designs, but for the most part
21:12
Speaker 1: of you in a water park or something, you'll contract
21:14
Speaker 1: out the whole thing, design, building, implementation, all that stuff
21:17
Speaker 1: a fun job. But this is one of the things
21:19
Speaker 1: that makes these two um some of the foremost designers
21:23
Speaker 1: is because they're they're not only owners of water parks,
21:27
Speaker 1: they're designing it themselves. They're testing it out themselves, and
21:30
Speaker 1: they're really putting a lot of thought into the water
21:33
Speaker 1: features that they're coming up with. Let's spend his life
21:35
Speaker 1: since the sixties, you know, Yeah, this is passion alright.
21:38
Speaker 1: So like you said, they are dozens and dozens of
21:42
Speaker 1: fiberglass pieces that just fit together. Like you said, like
21:46
Speaker 1: a little car track, you gotta raise lip on one
21:49
Speaker 1: end and a little sunken step and just slide them
21:51
Speaker 1: together and bolt them together boom, And what you want
21:55
Speaker 1: is to have a very smooth um single slide feel
21:58
Speaker 1: to that on your autom half. Yes, you know, once
22:01
Speaker 1: you're butt like bumping against every you know, every time
22:04
Speaker 1: there's a new section and then you have some steel
22:07
Speaker 1: that holds the thing up and there you go. You've
22:09
Speaker 1: got the world's tallest water slide. Um. One of the things, though,
22:14
Speaker 1: besides physical harm that you have to combat as a
22:18
Speaker 1: water park owner is also p Yeah. Sure, have you
22:23
Speaker 1: ever seen that South Park or the water the water
22:25
Speaker 1: park there, The concentration of PE is so much that
22:30
Speaker 1: it flips over and there's a chain reaction and everything
22:34
Speaker 1: turns to pe and like they're trapped in this water
22:38
Speaker 1: park and can't get out because everything is p it's
22:40
Speaker 1: so gross. Do they have measures in place for pin
22:43
Speaker 1: now or is it? Um? Well, just massive amounts of
22:46
Speaker 1: filtration and yes, chemicals just like in a pool, exactly right.
22:51
Speaker 1: But um, one of the ways that you combat this
22:53
Speaker 1: is to keep water circulate all the time. You don't
22:55
Speaker 1: want it to stagnate. And the other um, but honus
23:00
Speaker 1: of having water circulating all the time is you don't
23:03
Speaker 1: have to just use water once to go down the
23:05
Speaker 1: slide and then flush it down the train. A water
23:08
Speaker 1: slide is basically a closed circuit, and actually most water parks,
23:12
Speaker 1: or at least several of the features in the water
23:14
Speaker 1: park are closed systems themselves, so like the water will
23:17
Speaker 1: circulate through several different parts of the park in a
23:22
Speaker 1: closed system. Right, all right, Well we'll talk a little
23:24
Speaker 1: bit more about these pump hounds is and how that
23:27
Speaker 1: all works right after this break. All right, Josh, you
23:46
Speaker 1: mentioned um pumps. This water doesn't move itself, you know,
23:52
Speaker 1: I mean gravity helps on the way down. Yeah, I
23:55
Speaker 1: guess it does. You need to get it up right
23:58
Speaker 1: to the top of the slide her for this all
24:00
Speaker 1: to work correctly. And to do that you just use
24:02
Speaker 1: some pumps. You put a pump at a smart location,
24:06
Speaker 1: say a collection sump, and in most cases this is
24:10
Speaker 1: the pool that's at the bottom of the water for
24:12
Speaker 1: the um water slide that they fall into, right, and
24:16
Speaker 1: that water, that water is collected and sucked out and
24:20
Speaker 1: run through a filter, which is pretty simple. It sounds
24:23
Speaker 1: like filters for water parks. I'm sure, I'm sure get
24:29
Speaker 1: more technologically advanced than this, but at their basis, they
24:33
Speaker 1: um the waters run through a layer of sand and
24:35
Speaker 1: a layer of gravel, and the edges of the sand
24:39
Speaker 1: and the gravel pick out fine particulate matter, hopefully proteins
24:43
Speaker 1: from urine and um. The water, the clean water, the
24:48
Speaker 1: cleaner water is run through the other end and up
24:51
Speaker 1: to the the water slide and then down again. Yeah.
24:56
Speaker 1: And most of these slides, especially the ones where you
24:58
Speaker 1: have to work water all the to the top, have
25:00
Speaker 1: um one way valves or check valves. And that means
25:04
Speaker 1: at the end of the night, when they turn everything
25:06
Speaker 1: off and clock out and go to the local beer
25:09
Speaker 1: and pizza joint to I'll hang out, because that's what
25:11
Speaker 1: all water park employees do, right, It's like summer camp.
25:14
Speaker 1: They the water stays at the top. It stays in
25:18
Speaker 1: that pipe. It doesn't flow backward because then you would
25:21
Speaker 1: have to work to get it all pump back up
25:23
Speaker 1: to the top again every morning. Yeah. So it's a
25:25
Speaker 1: one way system and it just stays ready to go
25:28
Speaker 1: when they turn it on at the beginning of the day.
25:30
Speaker 1: They take their advil and wipe the crust from their
25:33
Speaker 1: eyes too. Pizza. Uh. They turn on that pump switch
25:37
Speaker 1: and the water is just right there at the top,
25:39
Speaker 1: rady to be uh. Squirted back out. Um. Backwashing is
25:46
Speaker 1: very important feature. If you ever worked at a pool
25:48
Speaker 1: or owned a pool, you know how to backwash and
25:52
Speaker 1: that is another uh sanitation method which you will reverse
25:56
Speaker 1: the flow of water through the filter and backwash it
25:59
Speaker 1: and it moves back through it cleans all the crud
26:01
Speaker 1: that the filter caught out. Yeah, and then pumps it
26:03
Speaker 1: out into the sewer system exactly. It's a very important part.
26:07
Speaker 1: It doesn't pump it back out into the collection pool
26:09
Speaker 1: because that would be so gross. That's right. And they're
26:11
Speaker 1: always pumping new water in there too, because you're losing
26:13
Speaker 1: a lot of water throughout the day as well. Yeah,
26:15
Speaker 1: people's bathing suits carry that water away evaporation. Sure, all
26:20
Speaker 1: that stuff. And as much pe as they're adding, they
26:23
Speaker 1: still need to add water, which is good. Um. Did
26:28
Speaker 1: you read the bit on Action Park? Yeah? Man, so
26:31
Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. It's I read and watched that
26:34
Speaker 1: documentary about a year ago, and uh, it was amazing.
26:39
Speaker 1: I can't say enough about the Mashable. Um, did they
26:42
Speaker 1: actually do the documentary? I think they hosted it. Okay.
26:46
Speaker 1: It was a park in New Jersey, the deadliest amusement
26:49
Speaker 1: park in the history of the world. Apparently. Yeah, it
26:51
Speaker 1: was called Action Park, and it was from the seventies
26:54
Speaker 1: till I think, and um, it had such a horrible
26:58
Speaker 1: track record of causing injuries and just being insanely flagrant
27:03
Speaker 1: with Yeah, pretty much that had the name Traction Park. Um.
27:11
Speaker 1: And there's a legend that the Smashable Articles or was
27:15
Speaker 1: it the New York Post, which now I'm questioning the
27:18
Speaker 1: veracity of this legend. But um that Action Park bought
27:22
Speaker 1: ambulances for the local township because they used them so much. Well,
27:28
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. If you watch the documentary interviews, Uh,
27:31
Speaker 1: it details the features of the park, which are all, um,
27:34
Speaker 1: you seem like you were teetering on the edge of
27:37
Speaker 1: injury at all times. And um, but when you entered.
27:41
Speaker 1: They interviewed a lot of people that were now adults
27:43
Speaker 1: that went there as teenagers and they were like, Action
27:47
Speaker 1: Park was the best thing ever. Well, and the reason
27:50
Speaker 1: why it wasn't just because they didn't care about your safety. Yet.
27:54
Speaker 1: They had really cool rides to Like, they had a
27:57
Speaker 1: water slide that made a pleat loop and that's not
28:03
Speaker 1: water slides don't do that normally. Yeah, it was a
28:05
Speaker 1: tube and if you look at this thing they have
28:07
Speaker 1: video of someone going through it. Um, it seems like
28:11
Speaker 1: the way Action Park was laid out, it wasn't like
28:14
Speaker 1: it was a sort of piecemeal like this thing looks
28:17
Speaker 1: like it was just built in a parking lot. Uh.
28:20
Speaker 1: And it was a complete and closed tube and you
28:21
Speaker 1: would just go down, do one loop and get spit
28:24
Speaker 1: out the other end. And it didn't always work great though.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's a problem. Yeah, it didn't always spit you out
28:30
Speaker 1: the other end. You might get stuck, broken or whatever
28:33
Speaker 1: in the in the loop. Yeah, it seems pretty great.
28:36
Speaker 1: They're like everyone across the board had fond memories. Um.
28:40
Speaker 1: And I know in the seventies we all like pat
28:42
Speaker 1: ourselves on the back for having you know, we didn't Yeah,
28:45
Speaker 1: we didn't have bicycle helmets and like we were all
28:48
Speaker 1: dangerous and our parents didn't care. But um, that sort
28:51
Speaker 1: of was the heyday, you know, like when kids were
28:53
Speaker 1: just left to their own devices and apparently everyone that
28:56
Speaker 1: worked there it was just like a really fun time.
28:59
Speaker 1: Like the cards are party in, the kids were partying.
29:03
Speaker 1: It was just a good old time at Action Park.
29:06
Speaker 1: So they're bringing it back now, right they are. After
29:09
Speaker 1: this this documentary went viral. Um and it's like a
29:13
Speaker 1: web documentaries. I don't think it's feature length or anything
29:15
Speaker 1: like that. But um, the once they went viral, the
29:18
Speaker 1: former owners were like, oh, okay, well I guess there's
29:21
Speaker 1: still demand for Action Park, so they bought back the
29:26
Speaker 1: old Action Park and it's the family business, right Yeah.
29:29
Speaker 1: And the the they basically said the recent owners who
29:34
Speaker 1: they sold it to back in the nineties made everything
29:36
Speaker 1: way too safe. So they've said about making the rides
29:39
Speaker 1: more dangerous, which is nuts. Yeah, they're probably walking that
29:43
Speaker 1: fine line, especially these days litigation and kids feeling like they're,
29:49
Speaker 1: you know, in peril. Yeah, it makes more exciting. I
29:51
Speaker 1: came across another article, um that basically said if you
29:55
Speaker 1: are worried about roller coasters, you should be way more
29:59
Speaker 1: worried about water parks. Yeah. The death rate is much higher,
30:02
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, the in the injury rate, the incident rate,
30:05
Speaker 1: for sure. So um, there was It was a study
30:08
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, which is where Action Park is. Um.
30:12
Speaker 1: But the studies between two thousand and seven and two twelve,
30:14
Speaker 1: So this is while Action Park isn't even operating, so
30:17
Speaker 1: it's not adding to these statistics. But one fifth of
30:20
Speaker 1: all amusement park accidents in New Jersey between those years
30:24
Speaker 1: where water park attractions, whereas only like thirty nine incidents
30:28
Speaker 1: were due to roller coasters, So like a hundred and
30:30
Speaker 1: twenty out of like five hundred something where things like, um,
30:34
Speaker 1: drownings in a collection pool or just injuries on a
30:39
Speaker 1: water slide, that kind of stuff. So if you're afraid
30:41
Speaker 1: of roller coasters, you should be way more afraid of
30:43
Speaker 1: water slide. Yeah. The one thing that I read in
30:45
Speaker 1: that article that made sense to me was they said that, um,
30:49
Speaker 1: with a roller coaster, you're generally looking at some sort
30:52
Speaker 1: of a malfunction, mechanical malfunction that causes injury. But water
30:57
Speaker 1: is unpredictable. It's not on a track, and sometimes you know,
31:01
Speaker 1: it does whatever the heck it pleases, that does whatever
31:04
Speaker 1: it wants, and maybe someone's size and weight will contribute
31:07
Speaker 1: to it in such a fashion where um, it's yeah,
31:10
Speaker 1: you're taking its humble and breaking a leg or something.
31:14
Speaker 1: Good times. I can't wait to go again. I got
31:17
Speaker 1: one last step for you once you got There are
31:19
Speaker 1: twelve water parks in North America. You know how many
31:23
Speaker 1: in the rest of the world. Wow? Really, yeah, crazy,
31:27
Speaker 1: it's the North American tradition. It is um. I used
31:31
Speaker 1: to love the Lazy River. What I would do is
31:34
Speaker 1: my friends and I would play hide and go seek
31:37
Speaker 1: in the Lazy River, which was fun. You basically get
31:40
Speaker 1: like five or six dudes because we didn't play with girls.
31:44
Speaker 1: You know, we were scared of them, and one of
31:47
Speaker 1: them would kind of hang back and the other ones
31:49
Speaker 1: would get in and then you'd wait like thirty seconds
31:52
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then you jump in the Lazy river
31:54
Speaker 1: and they'd have a little head start and you would, Uh,
31:57
Speaker 1: we would spend hours due playing hide and go seeking
31:59
Speaker 1: this thing because you would us creep along behind some
32:02
Speaker 1: uh you know, some big fat guy on a on
32:05
Speaker 1: a raft. You would just sort of hide behind him
32:07
Speaker 1: and see your friends swim by. And you know, you
32:10
Speaker 1: can swim with the current go super fast, so there
32:13
Speaker 1: are all sorts of techniques of hiding and evading and capture.
32:16
Speaker 1: It was pretty fun. That is pretty cool, man, that's awesome.
32:19
Speaker 1: I think we would spend like half our day doing
32:20
Speaker 1: that because we realized standing in line for a water
32:23
Speaker 1: slide is for the birds. Thinks will make our own fun.
32:29
Speaker 1: Look at girls, but not talk to them. They're scary. Uh,
32:33
Speaker 1: you got anything else No, and this is when I
32:35
Speaker 1: was in my thirties. By the way, if you want
32:39
Speaker 1: to know more about water slides, go visit our podcast page.
32:43
Speaker 1: It's got tons of stuff, including this podcast, so the
32:46
Speaker 1: circle of life will be complete. You can also type
32:49
Speaker 1: water slides into the search bar how stuff works dot Com.
32:53
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for uh listener, man,
32:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be all this from our buddy, Murph Tyler Murphy.
33:02
Speaker 1: All you had to say was Murph. Yeah, he's our
33:04
Speaker 1: our friend. It's a teacher and um sends this stuff sometimes. Yeah,
33:08
Speaker 1: in part time put putt golf course worker. And he
33:13
Speaker 1: wrote in about slinky's he said, he guys, as you know,
33:15
Speaker 1: I teach history and science, and in science class I
33:18
Speaker 1: do use a slinky to demonstrate concepts and physics that
33:21
Speaker 1: they may find hard to understand. What I do is
33:23
Speaker 1: I hold up as slinky with a class to see,
33:26
Speaker 1: um it is uncompressed or slinked. And I asked the
33:29
Speaker 1: students what they think will happen if I drop it,
33:32
Speaker 1: and response is always it will fall Mr Murphy up
33:36
Speaker 1: or down. Though, kids, then I drop it and it
33:39
Speaker 1: naturally falls, and they look at me like I'm unfit
33:41
Speaker 1: to teach. Uh. Then I use their cell phones or
33:43
Speaker 1: my cell phone and record the drop in slow motion
33:46
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the fact that, uh, information of an object
33:50
Speaker 1: state takes time to permeate. This is what you were
33:52
Speaker 1: talking about, remember, uh, and what this means for the slinky?
33:55
Speaker 1: Um to know that when it's dropped, it takes time
33:58
Speaker 1: to move as a wave through this ink. The slinky
34:00
Speaker 1: until the status quo of the slinkys ends are matched,
34:04
Speaker 1: stays closed. That science maybe political science. Basically, one end
34:10
Speaker 1: of the slinky moves and follows by the other end
34:11
Speaker 1: remains motionless, floating until the information reaches the motionless end
34:15
Speaker 1: and says you can fall now, which is what we
34:18
Speaker 1: talked about at the end there. I like how he
34:19
Speaker 1: put it. Yeah, so you do this in class and um,
34:23
Speaker 1: kids are amazed and delighted. I'm sure. Yeah, finally ste
34:27
Speaker 1: the slow motion camera fon. That's from Tyler Murphy and um,
34:31
Speaker 1: thanks Murphy. Yeah, thanks for all the support man. Yeah.
34:33
Speaker 1: As always, if you want to show your support for
34:35
Speaker 1: me and Chuck, you can tweet it to us at
34:39
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
34:41
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff You should know You can
34:43
Speaker 1: send us an email of support to Stuff podcast, to
34:46
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, and as always, you can
34:50
Speaker 1: support us at our home on the web Stuff you
34:52
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
35:00
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com?
35:03
Speaker 1: Mhmm