Your eyes are moving so much!
They're like rocketing back and forth.
So a few weeks ago, I was visiting Joe Hanson from It’s Okay to be Smart and he convinced
me that I could become dizzy in three different ways.
They were all horrible.
Now as I dug into the science of dizziness I found that the main researchers of motion
sickness are military labs, trying to figure out how a whole navy can avoid motion sickness,
or how astronauts can work in space.
But there was a gap in experiments looking at how ordinary civilians, like me, can manage
dizziness in everyday situations.
Tasks that would involve the kind of spinning you would do in a chair, but for a more practical
goal.
There’s no research on the best way to spin to hit a piñata.
Or on how well people can hit a piñata after spinning.
So we decided to run a simple experiment.
Simple experiment, silly experiment, I normally do psychology videos but I felt like this
was an important experiment for the greater good.
There’s also some fascinating science involved.
Now on closer inspection of piñata guy, it’s important to note that his head is facing
down.
I mentioned earlier you can get dizzy in different ways, which has to do with how we regulate
balance via our ears.
Your inner ear has three semicircular canals, they each sit on a different axis or plane
and they’re filled with fluid so they can sense how your body is orientated in space.
What you would think of as a normal upright chair spin only affects the vertical axis,
but like piñata guy, having your forehead facing down will manipulate the lateral axis,
and having your head to the side will affect the left-right axis.
And you can even see my eyes moving in different directions when I was spinning on these different
axes.
Now, I think spinning on the vertical axis will lead to the best piñata technique.
But to truly determine it, we’re going to have to do a lot of spinning.
Since I left Joe in Texas, I recruited some new participants:
Brian from Real Engineering, Matt from NandovMovies, Phillip from Volksgeist and Devin from Legal
Eagle.
And I attached my phone to their heads, using the Google Science Journal app, to measure
the acceleration on each axis.
We started with a control spin on each of the three axes – Everyone was really good
at spinning on the spot without moving, which is impressive.
So tThere was a big difference in the max speed along the test axis and average linear
speed.
Still it was occasionally wobbly.
Matt hit the ground at more than 16 m/s. (which for a split second was equal to 60 km/h).
Dizziness can be really dangerous!
And spinning with your forehead down led to the most subjective dizziness and recovery
time – which could be good to know if you want to make a piñata game harder on your
friends.
Next I wanted to test out if any over-the-counter motion sickness medication affected their
level of dizziness.
I gave Brian and Matt some ginger gum and Devin and Phillip a pressure band.
Now I suspect there was a practice effect as everyone spun faster on their second go.
Brian turned the spinning into some kind of competitive sport.
In research, ginger has been shown to reduce motion sickness the most.
Though in this case people spun faster, relatively, with the pressure bands than with the ginger
than with nothing.
It could have just been confidence, they could have felt more stable,
Or maybe nothing is conclusive because this experiment only had four participants.
It’s worth pointing out.
So if you want to dominate at your next party, we’ve concluded that:
You should spin on the vertical axis (head upright) and with slower acceleration if you
can.
This leads to the least amount of dizziness and highest likelihood of making contact with
the piñata.
Eating some ginger or ginger gum around 30 minutes before could give you an advantage,
a pressure band could give you a confidence boost.
And if you want to be-rounded piñata practitioner, there’s also the matter of the best way
to hit the thing.
Devin: I’d try to hit it that way, so have have the moment of inertia sort of operating
in opposite directions.
Vanessa: Everyone has their own piñata theory.
Brian: The stress concentration is going to be in the hook, because all the force is going
to have to go through that point where it’s being held up.
So you hit it like that.
Also because the reaction force is going back up that way, if you hit it straight down,
all of the force is being transferred into the piñata.
So: A vertical hitting technique will give you the best chance of knocking the piñata
onto the floor.
In theory
I want you to take these results and do one of two things: try and replicate this experiment
and tweet me the results.
Or, go and party and take the science into society.
This is the first piñata technique experiment that has ever been run in the world.
And I don’t want to call myself an innovator when it’s not warranted… but this is innovation.
Now for a deeper dive into how we feel dizzy, please head over to Joe’s channel it’s
okay to be smart.
Believe it or not, there’s a lot more footage of me in that chair.
And please consider subscribing to my wonderful participants for more smart content.
I want to thank the Google Science Journal app for sponsoring this world class experiment.
If you’re sciencing some things, it uses your phones built in sensors to measure everything
from acceleration to sound intensity and pressure.
Download it from your preferred app store and happy experimenting!