How Rollercoasters Work, Minus the Fun

Whether you're a rollercoaster fan or avoid them like the plague, there's no denying that these contraptions are striking examples of physics at work. So how do they actually work? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down the mechanics of rollercoasters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast on Josh Clark with Me as always is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, And this is stuff you should know.

(00:23):
The audio podcast that is now transcribed and available on
the blogs. It there. Yes, the deaf and heart of
hearing community is ready to go. Yes, Josh, and that
is exciting. Expand the group of people that can get
on the train. You know what I'm saying. I think so,
I hope. So you're talking about listen, getting like to

(00:46):
experience a podcast and then yes, I know what you're
talking about. Um, Chuck, are you ready to do this? Yeah?
Have you ever? My arms are up? You're been on
a roller coaster? I am a roller coaster guy. I
wouldn't call myself one of those guys you know who
like make special trips to states just to ride the coaster,

(01:10):
but I've always been a fan. There are plenty of
people who do that, and not just the States. Like
Japan is big with roller coasters as well, and um
do they have huge roller coasters? I could totally see
one of them is on the list. Um I didn't
get the list. Well, I can't wait to hear it
with the other few hundred thousand people at the same

(01:31):
time who are listening to this. Um chuck. I am
not a roller coaster guy, despite being from originally Ohio,
which is the home of arguably the greatest amusement park
in the world, Cedar Points. Yeah, Sandusky, Yeah, right there
on the water. It's nice. It is very nice. On
the other side, you have the Breakers Hotel Cataba Island,

(01:52):
where my family vacationed uh for many years when I
was a kid, um, and we would go to see
your point pretty frequently. But I'm a very young age
I was terrified of roller coasters because let me paint
you a picture. When I was I think three, my
dad said, Josh, here we are at Disney World. Why

(02:16):
don't you let me take you on this great ride
called Space Mountain, which now is very tame when you
look at it. It's not tame to me. I've since
been on it and it's still not tame alright, even
as a from a three year old to a twentysomething,
it's no difference because I've been completely spoiled on roller coasters. Now,
I was a very young kid. My dad was taking

(02:39):
me on Space Mountain. I had no idea what to expect,
and I'm damaged. Goods Now, really did that just put
a dent in it for you? It did. Now, if
I actually go, if I can get the courage up
to actually go on a roller coaster, I have just
an amazing time. Yeah. Sure, but it's the standing in
line and going up the first hill that, like I could,

(03:00):
I can't do it. I can't do it. Chuck. Yeah,
I had a similar experience and that I would not
ride roller coasters. But I really enjoyed the park. Six
Flags obviously here in Georgia, and we had the family
seasons pass every year. And it's at a certain point
in age my father said, you know you're gonna go
on these roller coasters if we're gonna pay for you
to get in the park because we're and I used

(03:21):
to hanging out with the banana splits. It's not worth
the money that alone. Well, here's how bad it stunk
for me is I would wait in line the whole
time because I was with my family, and then when
the time came, I would walk through the car to
the other side, and I used to have terrors that
they would like I would slip and fall on the
seat and the bar would come down and that was it.
It's like a Scooby Doo theme park. Yeah, so he

(03:43):
forced me to go on I think the Mine Mender,
and I never looked back. I was like, thanks, Dad,
that was awesome. That is really great. That's the exact
opposite of my story, and that one came out really well. Yeah,
so I like him now. Yeah. Sure, Uman's actually ruined
on roller coasters because her dead took her on Space
Mountain as well. He pretended like he didn't know what
was going on, you know, like he was freaking out,
and that's just ruined. Right, So our kids never going

(04:07):
to go on a roller coaster because both of his
or her parents are gonna be too nervous about that.
Plus the older you get. I mean I went to
see her point a couple of years ago, and it's
harder when you get a little older. The line seem longer,
the heat is more oppressive, and these roller coasters red
nicky yea and these roller coasters now are like astronaut training.

(04:28):
It's I mean I can take a lot, but I
would get off of some of these, thinking, man, we're
talking about the top thrilled dragster. Oh, they've got a
bunch of there. That kind of made me feel queasy
and it was fun, but it also tested the limits
of my intestinal fortitude. Nice. Well, let's talk about this.
I have to say, um, this, this um article by
Tom Harris, who's on par with the Grabster in my opinion,

(04:52):
um he uh. He basically breaks down exactly what's going
on on a roller coaster. And I was kind of
hoping that understanding this would make me feel or about it.
I don't think it's had any effect that at all,
but at the very least, now you and I can
explain what the deal is with roller coasters. Let's start, Chuck,
Let's let's take it back to sixteenth century Russia. Who

(05:15):
would have thunk it That's where it all began. Josh,
you're right, Um. Originally they had these ice slides, very
steep wooden slides covered in ice. You got a little
sled and I imagine it looks sort of like the
long straight water slide that they have today. Or I
took it like the ski jump, but without the jump
part at the bottom, you know. But it wasn't just

(05:36):
a sled. These things would these slides were covered in ice.
The track was, but then at times you could also
write a block of ice. So you can imagine some
crazy sixteenth century Russians riding a block of ice down
a seventy ft slope into a sand pit, loaded on vodka. Yeah.
Probably that's that is all roller coaster historian degree. The

(06:00):
beginning of roller coasters, right, yeah, And the next step
is a little, uh, somewhat disputed. But the best story
we found was that the French got on board and
said we're gonna build one of these. But in France
it got hot, the ice melted, so they said, well,
let's just wax the wood. And then they said, hey,
let's just put wheels on it. And all of a

(06:22):
sudden you had a wheel roller coaster in eighteen seventeen.
First one, yeah, the first one was the Russian Mountains
of Belleville on France said they ruses Bellevide. Yeah, um,
and uh, like you said, eighteen seventeen, Yeah, that was
introduced and from that point on that was kind of
like the explosion of um modern Well, I don't want

(06:46):
to say explosion of modern roller coasters, because it took
a good thirty forty fifty years, but after that it exploded, right, Yeah, Yes,
the United States in Pennsylvania in the mid eight hundreds
had the first one in the US. And it was
sort of like they still have these two that go
up the side of a mountain. I know. I've been
on the Incline Railway in Tennessee. Yeah, that's sort of

(07:07):
what it's like, terrifying to it. Basically was an old
coal line that they would take you up in a
cart slowly, and they called it a scenic tour, and
then I get the impression they would let you down
a little more quickly, yes, adding to the thrill. And
this was like eighteen fifty. It was the mid nineteenth century,
and it cost a dollar and I went and did
I did the west a calcula and two thousand, ten

(07:29):
dollars A. Well, I don't know, man, I mean that
this is it. Well, no other thing even resembling a
roller coaster in the United States. You're gonna pay twenty
five bucks. And it probably either that or playing Russian routlette.
They probably ensured it was rich people too, which rich
people in old coal cars. So UM from that point on,

(07:51):
Pennsylvania apparently was a UM has had like the long
standing tradition, longstanding history of roller coasters because they had
that called the mouk Chunk switched back Railway that was
that first UM roller coaster you described, and then they
had real ones like Kenny Wood Park there one of
the first amusement parks. Yeah, it's still there. And then
of course the world famous Coney Island. And then the

(08:13):
nineteen twenties happened and there are as many rides um
as as many rides I don't know roller coasters, but
there were as many rides in operation in nineteen states
as there are as there are roller coasters today. Uh yeah,
so they replaced the old obviously. Well yeah, that's part

(08:33):
of it. But at the same time, UM, you would think,
like you just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger,
and there'll be more and more and more. But the
Great Depression of World War two kind of cut the
head off of roller coasters in amusement parks for a while.
It wasn't ntil the seventies and eighties that you know,
the the the advent of the modern roller coaster that
you know and love today and I hate really began. Yeah,

(08:55):
so you don't even go to parks probably then, right,
I went to Dollywood. That was fun, but we did.
We wouldn't ride that roller coaster. That's pretty low stress,
I would think, as far as because there's so much
other stuff to do. It's no cedar point, no point.
It's just like shame, humility, shame, you know, every every turn.
Uh So, should we talk about some of the components

(09:17):
of the train itself and how it works? I think
we should, because really I was surprised at how um
ridiculously simple this is. Yeah, and you know what I
didn't know, and maybe I'm a dummy, but I didn't
realize that almost all of the ride is based on
just for momentum and so it's acceleration and gravity, yeah,

(09:39):
all those things combined. But it's not like there's points
along the track that like, we're slowing down, we need
to give you an extra magnetic boost at this point. Yes,
it's all found in that initial um first hill, yes,
which you're carried up the hill many times by a
chain lift. You know that sound. That sound probably strikes
fear in your or the slower versions even worse. Yes,

(10:03):
and that is uh, it's sort of like a bike
chain on a loop, and there's a a motor that's
just kind of Turning's a gear at the top and
the motor at the bottom, and you put onto it
with it's something called a chain dog. It's basically a
hook and it pulls you up the hill like on
a conveyor bolt, and then releases you at the top
and then physics does its thing right, and then another
way to get up the hill is the catapult launch lift,

(10:25):
which is um slightly more sophisticated. This is like, um,
what was the name of the ride? Yeah, that was
that I had an idea. Actually that might be magnetic. Yeah, well,
there's there's basically two ways to do it. The linear
induction motor produces magnets, right, and they are attracted to
one another, and it's the motor is attached to the

(10:46):
train cars um, and the motor is moving along the
track because of these two magnetic fields that are attracted
to one another, and it's pulling the train with it,
and that can generate really high precise speeds all of
a sudden, which I prefer being shot out of a
can in on that Kingdom. And then another way to
do it is to have two sets of wheels that
are spinning really quickly that kind of grip the train

(11:07):
cars and then shoot you up there too, you know,
both massive acceleration. Initially I think I don't know what
the number is, but zero to sixty and the blink
of an eye, I think that is it the top
speed or the top thrill drags. I think it's top
thrill drags. Okay, so that one goes like to a
hundred and twenty miles an hour and like a second
or two. Yeah, it's a a top speed of a

(11:28):
hundred and twenty and you must get that right out
of the gate um. And then lastly, the really big
component um that operates roller coasters, or the brakes. Yeah,
and they're not so different than any kind of disc
brake in theory. Um. Basically it clamps down on these
metal fins and the pads slow it down. Yeah, when

(11:49):
the little sixteen year old pimple wee face kid pushes
the button. Actually it's all computers. But yeah, don't scare people.
I like to think that your life is in that
that that boy's hands, right, that that one teenager from
the sin since I forgot to push the button. So those,
those are the components of the Those are the moving parts, right,
But then you also have the track itself, which is

(12:09):
basically broken down into two categories. You have steel coasters
and you have wooden coasters woodies, I think, as they're
affectionately known by enthusiasts, by sickos. Actually I don't know
if I think. I think they're called woodies. I might
have just made that up. So obviously the woodies are
those big old school ones you still see. I don't
even think they make wooden ones at all anymore, do they?

(12:30):
I don't know. Because the tallest one is the son
of the Beast at King's Island or King's Dominion, And um,
that one is old. That's like eighties. Yeah, And I
would imagine they keep topping them if they were going
to keep building them. Well, so the deal obviously, you know,
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure
this out. There's not nearly as much flex in a
stiff wood planks, so they don't do tons of twisting

(12:53):
and turning. It's really just about up and down, up
and down. Plus height is a big factor as well.
I think it high that the Son of the Beasts
is about half as tall as the highest steel coaster.
Yeah right, Um, and it's I would imagine expense is
kind of a big deal. Maintenances is huge because these
are basically like railroad ties, you know, every few feet

(13:15):
and they're interlocking and supporting each hill and twist and turn.
They're just inherently more dangerous because they're less precise. Yeah,
but for nostalgia, you can't beat it, that is true. Then,
of course you have the steel track, and these are
the ones where you suddenly can go upside down on
a corkscrew and you can dangle from it and basically
just come as close to death as possible. Uh, yes, Josh.

(13:39):
Nineteen fifties is when tubular steel first made its debut.
And uh, here you've got wheels that are made of
polyurethane or nylon, sort of more like a skateboard wheel
and fire. Yeah, and they generally have like wheels on top,
wheels on the side, wheels on the bottom, and it's
just clamped down on that sucker. Yes, very well. Yeah.

(14:01):
Then there's other ways that the train car can be
attached to the track. Um, you can have a suspended coaster,
which like hangs down from a track above and it's
not um, it's not fused, so you can like kind
of turn or flip out to the side. Are a
flip out in general? Um? And then there's the inverted coaster,

(14:23):
which is the same thing, except it's it's fused to
the to the track. It's not going from side to side.
It's frigid. Yes, it is the word I'm looking for, right, Yes,
what else you've got? The the flying that's when you're
in a seated position, but your first Yeah, but you're
rotated up and I think that's the one that six flags.

(14:44):
You're like sitting flat and then they pull you up
and backwards until you are completely ninety degrees facing straight down,
and then they'll let you go when you start from there, right,
there's also ones where you're sitting and then like the
car actually reconfigures so you're flat, so your chest is
parallel to the ground as if you're flying. Right, Yes, Okay,
is that the fourth dimension? I don't think. I think

(15:06):
fourth dimension would be maybe, um, like if you have
a suspended coaster and it was on a ball bearing joint,
so when you went around a curve. You could actually
like do a three sixty and kick out to the side.
It's not just forward, back up down the fourth dimension
are they horrible? No, it's it's basically, um, you're sitting

(15:28):
in a in a seat that's like a wing that
is on the outside of the tracks. You have the
track in the center and these two little wings on
each side, And as you're going through these loops, your
car itself, your seat itself is actually performing loops as well,
sometimes in the opposite direction of the loop you're currently in.
It sounds awful. Um, that sounds like also what you

(15:48):
just described as um as a pipeline uh coaster as well,
like the tube, the steel tube is going in down
the middle of the car. The fourth dimension is just
an extra spin on the pipeline design, right spin literally Yeah,
I didn't even mean that. And then of course there's
stand up, the traditional sit down stand up you like those?

(16:10):
I think I've only been on one and I liked it. Yeah,
there's the locknus I think King's Island. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know too much for you. I just didn't add
much of it, Like I have to stand up all day.
I go on a roller coaster, so I can sit
for a while for my money. That the ones where
you hang uh hang down in the seat, Like if
you sit on the outside front row of those, it's
just like it feels like you're flying. Yeah, a lot

(16:32):
of fun. Yeah, I've not been on one of those,
probably never will. Um. And then of course there's bob
sled wheeled trains on it you shape track, probably the
most dangerous and old timing of all. I would think
basically like the retro Russian sled thing, except that the
black advice. That's right. Okay, so there you got. There's
a roller coasters. Those are all the parts moving and

(16:54):
otherwise it's physics time. Now it is physics time, so
chuck too. Basically, a roller coaster ride is an interplay
of two forces. You have gravity, the downward pulled gravity,
and the force of acceleration. Yeah, acceleration to me is
where it all happens. Okay, I mean they're all actually
working together, along with the visual cues, which we'll get

(17:16):
to is really what makes it happen. But the acceleration
to me is where you get your your rush. And
and this is physics, but it's actually pretty interesting because
we can explain things like the feeling of your stomach
leaving your body and not kind of thing. So don't
go away, so chuck um too. To gain momentum, to

(17:36):
generate speed velocity, forward momentum inertia, I think is what
it's called. Right. Um. You just about every roller coaster
has at first hill, right, Yeah, that gets you going.
It's got always got to be the tallest one, right um. Yes,
And when you're at that point, you are at the
peak of what's called potential energy. As you're going up

(17:57):
the hill, you're you're increasing potential energy until you crest
the hill and gravity takes over, pulling you downward, right.
And at that point, your potential energy is converted to
kinetic energy, which is that downward momentum. That's right. So
as you go further and further down the hill, you
lose potential energy, you gain kinetic energy. And then every

(18:19):
successive hill after that takes advantage of a constant change
between kinetic and potential energy to keep your speed going,
to get it going faster, to slow you down. Um.
And that's how the roller coaster stays going as quickly
as it does throughout the whole ride, and it stays
in motion. Mr Isaac Newton had a little rule, let's

(18:40):
call it a law, first law of motion, that something
in motion tends to stay in motion. And that's what's
going on here. And you know, the roller coasters are
precisely designed, like you want to go down that first
hill and go up the second hill and be like, oh,
I couldn't quite make it, and then you're going back down,
although the King car has been known to not be

(19:02):
able to make it up that hill. What. Yeah, it
happened to me once we did the first TV commercial
for the King took. I was working on it. So
we wrote it like a dozen times without anyone there,
and a couple of times. And it may not do
that anymore. They might have been working the kinks out.
You get shot up straight up in the air, and
you come back down and do it again. You know,

(19:23):
they relaunch you. It may still happen. You have this
look of terror, Josh has just fallen over. Sorry, you
get some smelling salts, alright, so um geez, okay. See
I love it though, because you get two shoots out
of the gate, which is the most fun part. Yeah,
I mean, I can see how you would appreciate that.
I find that that's just awful. I wish you hadn't

(19:44):
told me that. I'm never going on that. We never
get um. Alright, So, like you said, object in motion
tends to stay in motion, and um, there are opposing forces.
But the track is any any roller coaster tracks going
to be designed to take advantage of building up entil
and then potential energy and then releasing it as kinetic. Right.

(20:04):
So while this is happening, Um, you're you have acceleration,
but you also have gravity, and gravity is constantly exerting
a downward pressure on your body. The reason gravity is
exerting that pressure is because, Chuck, did you know that
the earth atmosphere actually has measurable weight and it's considerable. Okay,
can I tell you what it is? Four close four

(20:29):
point four one quadrillion tons, So that's four point it's
four comma four one and then zeros that is that's
that's a lot of weight. Um. Obviously it's not pressing
down on you all at once, or else you would
be crushed into oblivion or just pushing up. Right. Well,
gravity is pushing down and you should conceivably if the

(20:52):
Earth was um like a kind of a warm marshmallow,
you go right into the center, but you don't because
the earth isn't a warm marshmallow. So the ground actually
presses back up. Right. There's pressure from the from the
um resistance created by the ground, and that's the sensation
of weight exactly, because the the bones and your feet

(21:15):
press up to the bones on your leg and etcetera, etcetera,
and all of a sudden you feel like you have
a little bit of weight to you right, Yes, so
that's the feeling of gravity. Yes, Then acceleration has its
own for has its own feeling. Yeah, And that's my
favorite because that's when your body and it's interesting because
it's an opposite force acting on you. If you're being
shot forward at a hundred miles an hour, you're going

(21:38):
to be feeling like you're being pushed backward, right, And
with both gravity and with acceleration, you feel the opposite,
like you're being pressed down by gravity, but you feel
the resistance from the earth. Yes, because you're a nurse.
Is different than your little train car that you're in,
and well that's the same, Yes, it's the same. With
acceleration and gravity, you feel the opposite feeling. So like

(21:59):
you said, when you're being shot forward, it feels like
you're being pressed back in your seat. That's actually your
seat pressing on your back, which I just that's the
fact of this roller coaster podcast. That's great. Actually, I
think we'll get to the mind with the stomach thing. Okay,
And then similarly, Chuck, when when the roller coaster um
slows down, you feel like, say, the harness or the

(22:21):
safety bar in front of you pressing into you, right,
So you're feeling the opposite sensation, like the bottom of
the hill, let's say, is when you'll feel most heavy
quote and we're using air quotes usually say that, but
I stole it, right. Um. The the other reason for
the sensations that you feel is that you're in the
car and the car is being acted on in its
own way that's different than the way you're being acted on.

(22:44):
So there's not just an an interplay between these forces,
but there's an interplay between you and the car, like
the seat pushing on you, the harness pushing on you,
or maybe even feeling like you're you're lifting up right,
So talk about that. Yeah, that is the cool waitless
feeling you get you reach a certain point eventually where
acceleration and uh gravity balance each other out. So that's

(23:08):
where you feel weightless and if you are uh well,
actually should we get to the stomach part. Yeah, what's
going on inside your body is You're not a solid
chunk of wood. Most of us aren't. Most of us
are comprised of different organs all placed in this gushy
body inside. So these things are gonna react differently. You're

(23:29):
different organs are gonna react uh different apart from one another.
So if you have that weightless feeling, that is actually
your stomach having less force exerted on it in a
downward motion, So you feel like your stomach is going
up because it kind of is. Yeah, And that's when
you're coming down a hill and the force of acceleration
and the force of gravity are equal. That's airtime, baby, Well.
Airtime is when acceleration exceeds gravity and you feel like

(23:52):
you you you don't just feel like you're being pulled upward.
If you let go, you will lift up in your
seat because again, the the forces are acting differently on
the car than they are on you. And it's just
like a cartoon where like your head stays here in
your neck just elongates. Yeah, it's virtually the same thing.
That's based on that principle that our bodies aren't solid,
like you said, right, and that will happen obviously in

(24:14):
a free fall ride or when you crest the top
of a large hill, you'll feel like you're coming out
of your seat because you are, right. So that's air
time when you are actually out of your seat, right, Yes,
that is the free fall. That's the money moment. That's
when you place the penny on your knee and you
watch it float. It's kind of dangerous. Probably, well that depends.

(24:34):
We shouldn't recommend that. Let's not okay. And then um chuck.
So you've got the interplay between you and the car,
all these two forces acting on your gravity and acceleration um.
And then also, like you said, there's visual cues, like
the the way that a roller coaster designed is so
that things are wishing past you, like you're taken into
a concrete punker all of a sudden, you feel like

(24:55):
you're about to smack your head on it, and that
you so you have not just the um the physical feelings,
but you have empirical sensations um of just going really
fast in a very dangerous way. Yeah, are a very
dangerous place. Yeah. See my fact of the show. Actually
it's not the stomach, but the fact that you, as

(25:16):
a person, your body cannot feel velocity. And it sounds
weird to say that, but if you think about it,
if you're on the bullet train and you're standing on
the bullet train, you're not going whoa back toward the
back of the train. The only thing your body can
feel is a change in velocity, which is acceleration, and
they use that constantly on a roller coach. Yeah, that's

(25:36):
what they're doing. They're taking advantage of the visual cues
and gravity and acceleration and kinectic and potential energy and
they're giving you the right of your life. Yeah. So
if you don't close your eyes on a roller coaster,
because you're missing out on a very important aspect of it.
Is what I say, Yeah, or close your eyes pants.
I have a picture I used to I don't know

(25:58):
where it is, not um of me on the Millennium
coaster at Cedar Point, and like it was like one
of the official like pictures they take you after the
scariest hill and like my eyes are wide open, but
I'm my body is clearly vacant, like I've I've left
my body for that moment. Did you evacuate your bowels? No? No,

(26:21):
I evacuated my body, but not my bowels. I would
now admit to that. I get a cedar point with
you so bad Now maybe someday. I mean, you've got
in laws up there. So is this safe? I mean
I know that you you you have a height sting,
so that's probably where a lot of that comes from.
But is it safe? Are you in danger? Uh? It

(26:43):
depends you know less? Well? No, really, last week, Um,
there was a three year old that died at a
place called Go Bananas in Chicago, and uh, yeah, it
looks like there was basically a three year old shouldn't
have been on this ride. Um, but it doesn't look
like there was any kind a roller coaster air. The
kid crawled out from underneath the safety bar, fell out

(27:05):
felt like three or four feet, which wasn't bad, but
fell onto the track and was hit by another car.
So it does happen, but this is so infrequent and
that was such a freak occurrence that, Um, to answer
your question the way you wanted to hear it, Yes,
it's safe. Well, we have some stats here from the
article josh Um. In two thousand six, little old three

(27:29):
million people visited theme parks and six hundred of them
sought medical attention that year. But the as as Tom
Harris points out, these are people who visited theme parks,
so for the whole theme park, not just the roller coasters.
They could have slipped on the way into the bathroom.
They could have gotten in a fist fight with Captain America.

(27:50):
So that's total injuries are total people seeking medical attention,
only one and thirty of those required overnight in hospitalization.
And uh so that means your risk of serious injury
just by entering a park is one million in your
chance of a fatal injury is one and one point
five billion. And your chances of a fatal injury in

(28:12):
a car crash or fifteen and ten thousand. And they
always use a car crash. Yeah, go go feel safe
in your car now. The most dangerous thing you can
do is get in the car. Okay. I wondered though,
how much of that obviously has to do with um
the fact that we don't ride around in roller coasters
that frequently. Oh yeah, we ride around in our cars

(28:33):
pretty pretty frequently. So so I wonder if the time
you know, spent and made it comparable, what the like,
how much that margin would narrow. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. Well,
in two thousand three and UM, the Brain Injury Institute
of America studied brain fatalities and they found that it's

(28:53):
these people had something going on beforehand. So it's not
the ride people who suffered death from head injuries or
brain injuries or people. Yeah, they they had undetected brain
conditions already in place. So our advice is, you know
those little warnings that you see, like if you have
a bad back, or you're pregnant, or you're pad blood pressure,
those aren't just there willy nilly. You should take heed

(29:14):
and don't go on the ride if you fit any
of those scriptors. I feel so bad for that family
in Chicago. That's awful. Um. I have some world records.
Should we go over those that the rough transitioner it was,
let's do it. Um. Tallest is the King of ka
at a New Jersey four hundred and sixty ft total

(29:36):
with a drop of four feet ninety degree angle. I
saw it. Oh yeah, And if you are a roller
coaster person or you are thrilled by roller coasters, are
terrified by them. You can go on to YouTube and
type in a roller coaster name or just roller coaster,
and people love to make little videos from like the
first car of like the roller coaster right, and it's

(29:58):
pretty much a p o V experience, very shaky. One. UM,
the fastest is in Dubai. That is at Ferrari World
and the ride is the Formula Rosa, and that goes
a hundred and forty nine, which is really fast if
you're not used to go on that fast. There are
twelve coasters worldwide Josh with a descent angle equal to

(30:19):
or greater than ninety degrees. I think the Millennium coaster
has one. They go up to ninety seven degrees. You're
actually like you're inverted, you're angled back the other way,
and the Millennium has a safety bar and that's it.
Oh is at it? Yeah, So you really feel like
you're about to just flip right out of the car. Terrified.

(30:40):
The largest woody is the Son of the Beast. I
think you mentioned that one. UM. The Screen Machine, and
here in Atlanta was for a very short time in
the early seventies was like a hundred feet all and
the fastest Woody is seventy eight miles an hour and
that's also Son of the Beast and the most a
wheezing sound as it comes into the station. Uh. The
oldest one is Leap the Dips. What it's called leaf

(31:04):
the Dips. It sounds like an old timey rollers Leap
the Dips. Uh. No. It is a Lakemont Park and
Alton to Pennsylvania and it was built in nineteen o
two and it's still running. That's another one in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is the heart and soul of this country's historic
roller coasters. I just decreed that. Okay, So again you
can go onto YouTube check out some pretty cool first

(31:26):
person viewpoint roller coaster rides. Also, one of my favorite
things to do is to look up photo spreads of
abandoned amusement parks. There's some really cool ones across the world. Um,
and then you should, I strongly recommend, and I think
you can join me in that, right, Chuck and going
to read this article how roller coasters work? Um, it

(31:49):
has an entire section on how loop the loops work physics,
Chuck and I opted not to cover that, but there's
a there's a whole bunch of pretty cool stuff cool
uh pictures. Yeah, and there in a little animation too
on one of them. It's it's just a quality article. Yeah.
So before you hit the park this summer, you can
bore your friends to death by telling them all about UM.

(32:12):
You can type in roller coasters two words uh in
the handy search bar how stuff works dot Com to
get that article UM. And I guess that brings up
listener mail. Josh, you're gonna call this uh for a
good cause from an old friend like that. And it's
from my friend Jason Jenkins and uh he lives in Japan,

(32:34):
married a Japanese lady. Let's se the one you're talking
about in the Nuclear Meltdown podcast. Okay, my only friend
in Japan. Well, although we have lots of podcasts fans here,
and you were like friends as well, so Jason writes
in Jinkie is what we call him Jinkie here. Hope
Paul is well, buddy. Despite what you may have read,
we are all alive and not turning into an outtake

(32:54):
from the latest bio hazard sequel. Not back to normal,
of course, but Tokyo and any percent of the country
is much more workaday life than a lot of the
media make it out to be. I could go on,
but I'll leave it it there. I write to pitch
a possible interesting podcast or article for the site. Have
you heard a quakebook? Have you heard a quakebook I have?

(33:15):
Do you want to describe what it is? Basically, a
an ex pat, an American ex pat I think British
British ex pat in Japan got a hold of some
tweets and basically turned I guess on the ground social
media coverage of the quake and the tsunami and the
nuclear crisis into an e book basically like a coffee

(33:38):
table e book. Um, he got this whole h he
got like I think he used like Twitter to enlist
somebody to do translations, and it just became this huge, massive,
grassroots um push to kind of document this from from
the people's view, right yeah. And it it was titled
two minutes and forty six seconds after the quake struck,

(34:01):
so like immediately this thing was launched without even probably
knowing what they were launching at the time. But now
there are thirty thousand words of short personal accounts and
the like from two hundred writers editors, designers, artists that
have all chipped in for this thing. Very cool. So
Jason goes on to say, amazing project, completely crowdsourced through

(34:22):
Twitter and then pitched to Amazon, who agreed to waive
their usual cut, so all of the money made by
this e book goes straight to Japan Red Cross. He said,
no one made a sin on it, completely volunteer. Uh.
These guys went from an initial idea to writing to
production to product in one month. It's really astounding if
you think about it. Uh. Several famous semi famous peeps contributed.

(34:46):
William Gibson, Yoko Ono, Barry Eisler, Jake Adelstein, etcetera. I'm
not directly involved with it, but a lot of my
friends are either in writing their stories or helping to
put the book together editing, layout, pr etcetera. We are
all trying to get fakebook as much attention as possible.
And that is from my buddy Jason Jenkins. And I'm
going to blog about it and send it out on Facebook.

(35:08):
And if you want to support Japan Red Cross, which
you should, then go out and buy a quickbook, because
you know what's the profits are going there? Where do
they get a Chuck. Amazon, Yeah, I mean, I'd say
that's a good place. Or just search a quake book
on your favorite there's quickbook, Twitter feeds and Facebook and
all that stuff, and it's a great way to support
the calls over there. Very cool. Good for you, Chuck,

(35:29):
Good for Jenkie. Yeah, yeah, you have to meet Jinkie
one day. I'm sure I will. Maybe one of your
trips to the Japanion, I'm sure I will will run
into each other. Maybe. Soya is a small town, Yeah,
I'll get into Tokyo and just be like Jenkie. That's it,
all right. Um, If you have a picture of yourself
terrified on a roller coaster, we want to see it.

(35:50):
You can go post it on our Facebook page. That's
Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can
tweet it to us uh s y s s y
s K a right podcast, all right? Yeah geez. And
then of course there's always old fashioned email, which we
still always love to get but don't necessarily respond to
every single one because trucks getting up there in years.

(36:12):
You can send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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