How Water Slides Work

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.

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Episode Transcript

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