Do you know that exciting feeling when your stomach is right by your brain and your world
flips upside down, and you scream with joy and want more?
If you answered yes, you clearly like baby showers!
Ah the screams of joy when they see the little pink sweater you knitted them.
Oh wait a minute – this is about roller coasters!
Okay -- we’ll do baby showers some other time!
Right now, you’re about to upgrade from roller coaster fan to expert.
Counting down from:
9.
Some roller coaster tracks are filled with sand
Every company designing roller coasters has their own unique style, and rides across the
world and even within one country can be really different in design.
One thing is universal though: there will always be a track and high-speed roller coaster
trains moving on it.
And, those huge entertainment monsters make crazy loud sounds.
Roller coaster fans will agree even those sounds vary from ride to ride as a part of
their individual style.
It has to do with the design of the track, and among the huge variety box beam design
makes the loudest sound you won’t confuse with anything else.
This type of track was designed by Bolliger & Mabillard company, or B&M as it’s usually
abbreviated.
So a box beam track has a spine of steel that is made of hollow rectangular cross-section.
There are fin plates out of steel that keep the two rails made of circular steel tubes
together.
Those fin plates are set apart at regular intervals.
When trains move on the rails at impressive speeds, the track gets the vibrations and
they are the reason we hear that loud noise.
The box beams only make the sound louder because of their size and shape.
And even though the sound of B&M roller coasters is basically its signature, it can at times
cause some trouble.
For example, it gave some major inconvenience to people living across the road from Canada’
Wonderland, a theme park in Ontario.
It opened in the 1980’s in the midst of farmland, but a few years later that farmland
became a residential area.
It was causing tolerable discomfort first, but then things got really out of hand when
they opened their tallest roller coaster ever – Leviathan.
Its height is 305 ft (93 m) and the speed the trains reach is 93 mph (150 km/h).
Imagine all the noise it produced!
And, to make things worse, it was built right by the front gate of the park and covered
some of the parking lot making it even closer to people’s homes.
When they started complaining, the park management invited an acoustical consultant and they
came up with an idea to reduce the noise this beast made using something as simple as sand.
Now, the obvious solution was to fill the rails with it, but they realized it would
be impossible since they’d have to cut them open and weld them back.
It would have made the ride not as smooth as it used to be.
So, they decided to work with box beams instead.
They cut holes into every box beam and blew sand with an aggregate blower filled with
compressed air so that the sand could move up in a long tube.
It must have been a pretty tiring job since they had to fill each section of the track
one by one because they are all sealed and you can’t just work with the whole thing
instead.
In the end, it all worked its magic!
The sand dampens the vibrations of the steel and so the noise levels were reduced significantly.
Since this trick was a success, the company used the same technology on other rides, such
as Gatekeeper at Cedar Point in Ohio, and Yukon Striker at Canada’s Wonderland.
This time, they filled the rails with sand before erecting the coasters and so they didn’t
have to open box beams.
Who knows, maybe this trick will become a universal roller coaster design rule in the
future.
8.
Most roller coasters don't have engines You’d imagine these powerful high-speed
mini trains have powerful little motors, but it’s wrong.
In fact, they move by converting energy!
When the train is on top of the track, it has potential energy, and when it falls because
of gravity, it transforms into kinetic energy.
And this energy conversion keeps going as the train goes up and down on the track.
Dr Ted Bunn, chair of the physics department at the University of Richmond in Virginia,
compares it to riding a bike.
You don’t have to work hard as you move down the hill, because you’ve already saved
enough energy from going up.
7.
Their loops aren’t circular
Have you ever noticed the loop-the-loop is never a perfect circle, but looks more like
an inverted teardrop?
It’s not a design flaw, but a well thought-over choice.
Thanks to it, you’d stay in the sit when the train goes upside down even without restraints!
A loop-the-loop is kind of a centrifuge.
When you get to the top of it, gravity is pulling you toward the ground, but acceleration
force is pushing you in the opposite direction.
Both of these forces are basically equal, and so your body becomes almost weightless
for that moment when you are at the top.
Thanks to the teardrop design, it’s easier to balance the forces.
The train gets fast enough by the top of the loop and slows down at the sides where the
turn isn’t that sharp.
So it minimizes the danger of the train going too quickly where it shouldn’t be.
And then you barf.
6.
Height restrictions aren’t meaningless Now that you know laws of Physics will keep
you in your seat even without a harness when you’re hanging upside down, you’d think
those height regulations don’t actually mean a thing.
In fact, they do.
In case something goes wrong, and emergencies can happen anywhere, the operators will have
to hit the safety break.
And the restraints won’t be able to protect someone below the minimum height requirements.
So don’t let kids fake it, if you see they’re getting on their tiptoes because they really
want to be on that ride.
5.
Engineers test rides at theme parks a few times a day
Security is everything at a good theme park, and so engineers test the rides for loose
bolts, rust, oil or any other prospective dangers.
And because they can’t test the ride on actual people, they send sandbags down the
track at full speed.
4.
There’s a ride with hidden song selections There’s a famous roller coaster in Universal
Studios Florida theme park that’s called Rip Ride Rockit.
It offers its passengers on-ride video from cameras installed in every row, LED lighting
and on-ride music!
There are twelve riders in every train and each of them has two speakers in their headrest.
They get to pick one of 30 songs on a small touch screen on the restraint.
However, there are also some secret songs not every one knows of.
If you ever find yourself on that ride and want to test this trick, just press and hold
the ride logo for 10 seconds.
Then, you’ll see a 10-digit keypad and you’ll be able to dial a three-digit code to play
the song you like.
Ooh, how about Rocketman!
3.
The first roller coasters were inspired by 18th century Russian ice slides
Russia is famous for its frigid winters, and so it’s not surprising that local people
have enjoyed ice-related activities for centuries.
They froze water over wooden constructions to make ice ramps and slide down them on blocks
of wood and ice.
In the 18th century, they built whole snow parks called “Russian Mountains” around
the palaces of Saint Petersburg.
This type of entertainment was popular with upper class and even Catherine II herself
who had her own mountains by Oranienbaum Palace.
La dee da!
After Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo, the Russian soldiers occupied Paris and must
have brought the sliding tradition with them.
However, it was not cold enough in France to go down actual ice, so they added wheels
to sleds.
This is how the great grandfather of modern roller coasters was born in 1817.
2.
The oldest roller coaster that’s still running is over 100 years old
The oldest roller coaster in the world that you can still ride was opened in Altoona,
PA in 1901.
It’s called Leap-The-Dips.
Hey, you go first.
They almost shut it down in 1985, but it was officially proclaimed a National Historic
Landmark 11 years later and continued its operation.
As for the first ever roller coaster in America, it was opened on June 16, 1884 in Coney Island,
Brooklyn.
The ride cost one nickel back then, and the maximum speed of it was six miles per hour.
That sounds like nothing compared to today’s rides, but it was incredibly profitable and
made $600 a day, that’s equivalent to $15,000 these days.
And, it’s basically the reason roller coasters became such a craze in the US.
1.
The fastest, tallest and longest rides are all in different countries
Kingda Ka is currently the tallest roller coaster in the world.
It is located in Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey and stands proud at 456 feet
(139 m) tall.
That’s taller than the Statue of Liberty at 305 feet (93 m)
The longest ride in the world is the Steel Dragon 2000 at Japan’s Nagashima Spa Land.
It covers 8133 feet (2479 m).
The fastest roller coaster in the world is Formula Rosso in Ferrari World theme park
in Abu Dhabi.
It reaches 150 mph (241 km/ in 5 seconds!
And then you barf.
Now isn’t that impressive?
Are you brave enough to go on crazy roller coaster rides?
Confess it in the comment section below!
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