Instant Genius - Brendan Walker: Where is the best place to sit on a rollercoaster?

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Brendan Walker originally trained and worked as an aeronautical engineer, but now has a far more thrilling job title, quite literally - he’s a thrill engineer. He’s been working with theme parks to help create the most exciting rollercoasters, using design principles to craft extreme, human emotional experiences to the rides. He tells us why people have a love/hate relationship with rollercoasters, the fine line between fun and fear, how to get your thrills in lockdown and most importantly, where the best place to sit on a rollercoaster might be. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations. Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Elisa Raffaella Ferrè: What happens to the brain in space? Jim Davies: How do you use your imagination? Dr Erin Macdonald: Is there science in Star Trek? Matt Parker: What happens when maths goes horribly, horribly wrong? Kathryn D. Sullivan: What is it really like to walk in space? Sir David Spiegelhalter: There's no such thing as Blue Monday Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit nameadio.com to learn more. But I think the fact that you're strapped to several tons of steelwork hurtling around a track, sometimes up to 5G, is a most terrifying thought. But, you know, I think you should, I mean, two ways you can actually combat that. One is to think about it objectively, but this really is a very safe mechanism. And actually, I am strapped probably one of the most safest experiences on the planet. And the other thing is, yes, you should be scared because that's what it's designed to do. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team.

With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello, I'm Alexander McNamara, online editor at BBC Science Focus. This week, we're asking you to scream if you want to go faster. Okay, we're not actually going to strap you into a... fairground ride, but we are going to take you on an emotional roller coaster all about, well, roller coasters. Brendan Walker originally trained and worked as an aeronautical engineer, but now has a far more thrilling job title, quite literally. He's a thrill engineer. He's

been working with theme parks to help create the most exciting roller coasters using design principles to craft extreme human emotional experiences to the rides. He speaks to BBC Science Focus editorial assistant Amy Barrett about why people have a love-hate relationship with roller coasters, the fine line between fun and fear, how to get your thrills in lockdown, and most importantly, where the best place to sit on a roller coaster might be. She kicks things off by asking him

what exactly a thrill engineer does? A thrill engineer, I mean, I came up with the description because I really like the idea of the sort of objective practice of engineering, which is creating things with rules, but also the very subjective. elements of human emotions, which is the thrilling aspect. So in a sort of very headline sense,

being a thrill engineer means I really try to craft a human emotional experience and very extreme human emotional experiences, but using design principles. And what kind of psychological levers are you trying to pull when you design a roller coaster, which are the most powerful ones of those. Well, when you think of a roller coaster, in fact, if I put you on a roller coaster and blindfolded you, your body's levels of arousal track very, well, pretty precisely, the changes in acceleration forces which are felt. Now, arousal is just one half of the picture. If you're looking at a very simplistic view of human emotions, you can look at two dimensions of

pleasure or valence, as the scientists call it, and arousal, which is our bodies being pumped and kind of ready for action. So roller coasters are so successful because they really grab hold of that element of arousal. And because it's so tightly interlinked with our physical sensations that we get from the world, that we can almost force an emotional experience by the very shape of the roller coaster. And has there been any evidence that going on roller coasters, thrill-seeking in general, is it good for you?

There's, I mean, I've done some studies at, in fact, at Thought Park, looking at well-being associated with going on roller coasters. The first thing that they wanted to look at was going, well, will it help you to lose weight? And I could tell you, walking between roller coasters will make you lose more weight than actually been on one. I think we found out that being on a roller coaster was equivalent of eating one less chip.

So physically, no. But mental well-being is a really important aspect of what I do. So there's when, if you experience pleasure, the other half of the emotional experience in a social context with friends, people you care about, that can be translated into happiness. And happiness itself is a very infectious. phenomenon and it is a real contributor to mental well-being. So it's all within the broader discussion about the importance of play and social play in society and that being really pivotal in the mental health, mental well-being of the society. But not everyone enjoys roller coasters.

Why are some people more, say, sensation-seeking than others? Well, if you look at the personality types of people who tend to go to theme parks and go on roller coasters, in fact, I usually quote Marvin Zuckerman, who's at Delaware Tech, I think of him as the grandfather of thrill-seeking. He looks at personality types and classifies them in four different dimensions. One is thrill and adventure seeking, which is very much to do with roller coasters and that kind of high-adrenaline kind of experience. The other one is experience seekers, people like unusual experiences like theatre and circus and magic. The other one is disinhibition, so people who might like to scream on a roller coaster really let themselves go.

And the other one is susceptibility to boredom, which is a great measure, if particularly if you're going to queue for an hour to get. on a rollercoaster that lasts only two minutes. So, and then there's another dimension which is our perception of risk. And all of these factors vary throughout our lifetime. They can also vary with other events in our life, such as having children. They can alter this sort of psychological profile. But so we tend to see people who score high and through an adventure seeking and experience-seeking will enjoy roller coasters, but also it is people's perceptions of risk, novelty-seeking, and critically, I think it's how we ride roller coasters. So that's such a rough kind of way to understand people. But if I went on a ride with you, we might have a great

time because we're good friends. If I go on a ride because I'm doing a very objective, scientific exploration of the ride, I'll have a different experience. If I go on it with somebody I don't like in the rain, I could have a miserable time. So there are so many contributing factors. And how do you combat that? A someone who's designing a ride knowing, or not knowing, the situation that the passengers will find themselves in when they go on it? Yeah. So I think, as I saying with roller coasters and controlling people's levels of arousal and that being so tightly controlled with their emotional experience, these other elements, So the other ways you can create thrill or emotional experience can come through being valued,

which is a very sort of social setting, how you feel about yourself, how you think others are perceiving you. There's a spectacle, which is to do with magic and amazing things that are happening around you and really question your belief systems. And then there's all sorts of ideas to do with power and control, which are very much tied in with potential energy and kinetic energy. And so all these factors, there are multiple streams and multiple ways you can actually think

about engineering and creating a ride. And it's really flipping between these different modes where you sort of examine the experience. But I can say you can make the most amazing ride, but unless you're riding with the right person, it means nothing. So I tend to like, when people say, what's your favorite roller coaster?

There's a ride called, well, it's a kind of magic mouse kind of ride. There's one at Alton Tower is called Spinball Whizzer. And it's a roller coaster which doesn't invert, but the car you're sat in, four people can go in at two pairs back to back. And the orientation of the car spins round. And you don't know whether you're going to go forwards, backwards, down slopes, up hills. And it's that element of unpredictability, which with people you know or with strangers, somehow breaks the ice and gives this sense of social cohesion, like in any kind of disaster where you don't know something's going to happen.

And so I think rides like that, when they're very carefully, the social dynamics are carefully managed, I think you can then immerse people in the other aspects of the ride. So, yeah, it's subtly, and I think a lot of these techniques have much more in common with life performance and life theatre than they do with engineering. And so you've been involved from the conception right and up until the end the final result, is that right? Yes, I have been involved in the design of roller coasters from early inception. So, for example, the Wickerman at Alton Towers, all we knew was they had a footprint of land

and we had an audience who were demanding a new roller coaster. After that, there were no other prescriptions for how or what we would make. So in a situation like that, there are several things we look at. One is one of the cultural trends in society, what novel technologies are out there, what are people talking about? So this is where the idea in that particular instance, where wooden roller coasters came in, because obviously in America, they're very big and very popular.

In the UK, we only have one or two. and then this theming to do with the Wickhaman, the horror scenario kind of started to evolve. And then there are other rides like 13 at Alton Towers where that had been pretty much finalised, but there was one feature on it, which was the vertical drop feature, which, if you don't know 13, you go in and a roller coaster. This isn't a spoiler, by the way. I think most people know this. You go into the dark tunnel, the ride stops, and then it falls. your carriage falls vertically through the dark. And they wanted to know for the 95th percent are, that's for like 95 percent of their audience who go to Walton's Hours, was this going to be

thrilling? They wanted to know how far in the dark should we drop people. And there's a, there's quite a precise calculation. We can work out how quickly the brain processes novel information, such as dropping in the dark, and how long it takes to translate that into action such as gripping the arms of your chair or screaming or something else. You're saying if you look at psychology experiments in this area, you find the time it takes the 95th percentile, which is about 0.7 seconds, and then you calculate how far in 0.7 seconds can we drop, and that is the distance the ride will be. And that's quite a critical calculation because if you make it too short, people aren't going to be thrilled, they're not going to be

scared. If you make it too long for every extra inch of steelwork you create, it's going to cost tens of thousands of pounds. So there's not only a psychological, but there's an economics kind of modelling behind this whole thing. Absolutely. So in 0.7 seconds, how far did you drop them? Oh, God, I'd have to go back now to my calculations. Let's see. I think it was in 0.7 seconds. I think we were, that was formulating response. So I think that was a around three meters. Sorry, that was to detect that something had happened. I think it was one point two seconds that it took for the 95th percentile to formulate a response. And that was just over seven meters. But people who've ridden 13 will probably know that it doesn't drop you seven meters.

It's actually more like five meters. And the way we do that, we shaved off another two meters of steelwork, saving tens of thousands of pounds, was to pump prime. the brain. So we drop the people in the dark a very short amount of time. The brain suddenly goes, right, I understand what's going to happen next. And the second time we drop them, which is much further, it takes the brain much less time to process that information. So again, it was an awareness of psychology and this sort of pump priming that we were able to reduce the amount of steelwork and still critically deliver the thrilling experience that people were expecting. But in any other situation, a drop like that would frighten the hell out of me. How does that turn to thrill and kind of excitement at that point?

Yeah, I feel like my job's terrorising people. There's, see, as animals, we have a really strong relationship with thrill. So in evolutionary terms, thrill has evolved as a mechanism to reward the persistence of life. Now, whether that's evading danger, not being killed or maimed or suffering any kind of morbidity or mortality, all the way through to reproduction, sating hunger, quenching thirst, chasing prey. These are all quite exciting things. And in modern life, modern society, we very rarely, particularly in our Western world, we're very lucky in some senses, we don't experience those extremes. But to feel thrilled is to feel truly alive. I mean,

these are at the extreme ends of our emotional experience. But in a world where we don't feel thrilled, we feel flat, we don't feel excited. So theme parks and roller coasters, part of their appeal is because they're replacing those mechanisms that did use to naturally exist. But whereas in the wild, we truly were faced with real dangers, the job of a theme park is to create the perception of danger. And so we all allow ourselves to be immersed in this world of play, where we all go along with the idea that we're actually in danger. But actually, the danger of any accidents at a theme park, you're more likely to fall off a donkey in Skegness than have any accidents on a theme park ride.

Is that true, really? Because I know a lot of people who do really hate rides and are anxious that, I mean, for me, when I see them going around, I think, how on earth do you go upside down and not have the wheels drop and just fall completely? What would you say to people that have that fear? Well, Thomas Miller actually designed the upstop wheels, which are the things that keep you from falling off the track. And I'd say, if you trust wheels to keep you on top of the track, you can trust those wheels to keep you underneath the track. that's for sure. But he has you, that patent for that was over 100 years ago. There are many patterns like that to do with health and safety, which have evolved over 100 years. And I mean, you can look at the statistics. I mean, they say that, yes, you're safer on a roller coaster

than you are in a civil aviation airliner. But that doesn't help most people. I think the fact that you're strapped to several tons of steelwork hurtling around a track, sometimes up to 5G, is, is a most terrifying thought. But, you know, I think you should, I mean, two ways you can actually combat that. One is to think about it objectively, but this really is a very safe mechanism. And actually, I am strapped probably one of the most safest experiences on the planet. And the other thing is, yes, you should be scared because that's what it's designed to do. So in some sense, embrace it.

but also if it's not for you, look for rides which don't invert, ones that are less extreme, and even if they're no good for you, go and hold the coats of people who go on and live the experience vicariously. So enjoy them as they're screaming. And even if it's only that amount of a sensation that you can stomach, literally, that still may be thrilling for you just to be present and watching other people having that kind of experience. So you can experience at all kind of levels. But up to 5G, what on earth, what happens for our bodies when you go up to 5G? Yeah, a lot less than when you're going up to 10G. There's, if you look at the rocket sled experiments by Colonel John Stepp,

who was the RAF medical officer and who was also a test pilot, he self-tested, I don't think this would be allowed today, He put himself on rocket-led experiments and went beyond 10G. This was laterally going forwards. He detached his retina. He caused all sorts of hemorrhaging. I mean, he survived, but he was like going, well, where are the limits? And I think he found them.

But that led to the invention and evolution of G-suits. And so specifically what happens, depending on which way you're facing, If you're on a Superman-type ride, you're facing headlong into the way you're going. If you're sitting on a standard ride, so the forces are pretty much going through your body. And the way that rides will work is, you know, all the banking and all those twists and turns, they primarily try to maintain the majority of the G-forces acting through the body, so through your head, down through your spine, through the seat of your pants, and to the seat below you. And that's because we're pretty good at withstanding G-forces in that particular

plane. But if you sustain them for any period of time, that kind of force will drain blood out of your head. So you'll start getting white outs or blackouts. And if you go the other way, you'll start getting red outs and greyouts. I have to check this actually, be the right way around. But essentially, blood is going to your head or from your head. So blacking out is a real possibility. But on rides, roller coasters, we only experience 5G for our momentary periods. In fact, they usually mark transitions

between different forms of motion. And they can be the thrilling moments when we hit those peaks. But you should know that we don't experience them for any length of time. We're constantly changing, which is one reason why experiencing those kind of G forces of that length of time

is safe, unlike a fighter pilot who might experience 10G and have to hold that in a turn for many seconds. And that's one reason they have these pressure suits which apply pressure to the body and make sure that blood pressure is maintained to the head so they don't pass out. So are there things that just couldn't be built into a roller coaster

because they're too scary or potentially too dangerous? Yeah, I had a student at the Royal College of Art who did his PhD And his final thesis was the design of a euthanasia coaster, which took people, they got on it. And it went through increasingly tighter loops, increasing the centripetal force consistently. So first off, you'd black, just black out quite nicely, but then ultimately you would hemorrhage and die. He said it would be a pleasurable death. But I'd hate to think, I mean, I wouldn't like to be the first person. to test it, that's for sure. So incredibly tight radius loops, which will generate G forces above

5G, they will be quite dangerous. I mean, whiplash is also an issue. So if you go into a curve too quickly, the transition between straight movement and curved movement can create a spike in G. So even though the sustained movement around the curve might be something like 5G, going into the curve might be 10G. So, and that's also one reason why these teardrop shaped loops have evolved. These, they're called clothoid loops, which take you in gently and then increasingly get tighter in the curves. So curves are taught you have to watch out.

Sudden changes, which can cause whiplash. I mean, they are pretty bad. But no, apart from that, as long as your body is kept clear of anything that might hit it, I think trauma and rapid changes in forces are the worst things that could happen to you. But none of these things ever find themselves into actual rights. I'm assuming you'd spot these things at what kind of stage in the testing? Well, there are companies like Gershauer in Switzerland who do a lot of testing on this. So they are very big firms. They're almost like three-dimensional train manufacturers. And they're level.

of engineering and precision is quite phenomenal. So they will do computer modeling at a very early stage and work out the forces that are going to be applied not only to their carriages, but also to the rider. And there are various things you can do. If you want to roll somebody but you don't want the blood to go rushing to their head, you can put the centre line of that roll through the, well, they call them heartline rolls. So you put the centre of the roll around the centre of the body, and the body is kind of evenly distributed around this kind of barrel roll. So there are ways to optimize track layouts for the comfort and the safety of a rider. But we are reaching limitations.

I don't think there are many things on a roller coaster, which would feel nice and be safe that currently isn't being done. There's, in fact, the founder of Gersvauer is Vernish Dengel, and he's in his 80s now, but a lot of the features like the cobra roll or the little buddy hops that you get on rides. I mean, the cobra roll is a sort of a ride where you sort of swoop up and then back down on yourself, a little bit like you might imagine a helicopter doing a kind of U-turn. That's one of his signature curves. But he's got a real kind of tacit understanding of what feels.

good. But I think a lot of that language, he's already worked out. Everything else on that is kind of riffing on the same music now. So what is in store for the future of roller coasters and rides? Well, for the future of rides, I've been particularly fascinated with the use of virtual reality. Well, in fact, actually any technology. I initially started looking at ways to broadcast video from rides exactly for the reason you were talking about people who might not want to be on the ride themselves, but might want to see what's happening to somebody on the ride. So being able, for somebody on the ride to be able to broadcast their experience to somebody on the ground completely changes the social dynamics of what's going on and enables somebody on the ground to live vicariously through the eyes

of the person who's on the ride, but also the person on the ride realizing they're performing to somebody on the ground and that element of performance. So if you encourage yourself to scream, even if you don't feel like screaming, it's been shown that that can also pump prime your emotion. So there's all sorts of dynamics that change just with that technology. But most recently, I've been looking at the application of virtual reality onto amusement rides. I think roller coasters aren't the right kind of ride to take VR, because the pleasure of a roller coaster is being able to to get that high vantage point, to see the real world ahead of you, and appreciate your movement through the world on this architectural scale.

But there are other rides, simpler rides I'm working on, which you probably find at the fairground, which are much sort of the circular flat rise, they don't invert. But with the application of VR, I can reverse engineer the physical forces that the rider's being felt and then create a virtual world that makes the rider believe they're on a ride which is much more extreme. than the one they're actually on. And I think for me, that's,

well, that's where my excitement is at the moment, trying to augment all these existing, but what people perceive to be not very thrilling rides. And I'm hoping to up the ante on those. And you've mentioned that when you're working on Wickerman, you wanted something that was sort of maybe novel, something that people hadn't seen before. If you're always seeking bigger and bigger, more novel thrills,

Would we ever come to a point where nothing would actually thrill us anymore? Yeah, I think with, I mean, the scientific definition of thrill is our response to novel stimuli. And so from generation to generation, what was novel for my dad and my granddad is no longer novel for me, so I'm looking for something new, and that can be new culturally. It can be new sensations. And so, yeah, we run out of superlatives. And it's one reason when you look at the marketing of new rides, it's always the fastest, the highest, the most number of loops. And we gravitate towards novelty. It's in our human nature to need

novelty. So we will just find other things to become novel. So it could be the application of technology. I mean, fairgrounds themselves, it was the first place that most people in the UK experienced electricity, because they'd never seen electricity before. We'd go to the fairground, you suddenly see electric light bulbs. So, and same with cinematic projection, first appeared at fairground. So the fairground and amusement parks have been placed not only for novel sensations, as in physical forces, but also novel forms of technology. So I don't think we're ever going to run out of novelty. As long as we're still inventing, we will always... In fact, I always think generation to generation, we're always looking to ride the latest technological innovation, and that will always be true. And how important in creating a thrill is the story of a ride

or the magic of a roller coaster? Because they will have sort of themes at the moment, don't they? Yeah, the theming can be quite important in a ride. I mean, there's two reasons. One is from a marketing perspective, and actually marketing is very important because when you look at the overall thrilling experience, it starts right at the moment you see a poster which shows a ride, promises to deliver a thrilling experience, which is all part of the marketing. That's when it really captures our imagination. And then we start to build up a picture in our mind of what that ride might do to us. We buy a ticket days ahead.

We start to get excited we're going to go on that ride. So the marketing and the theming is really important because it gives us a way to understand the ride and what it might deliver to us. And particularly if we can talk to other people, that's much easily communicated in a story. When we get to the ride itself for a ride like Wickerman, there are, let's say, chase sequences or moments you want to avoid danger. So those can be borne out in a kind of loose narrative. I mean, as I said earlier, the majority of the emotion experience comes from the twists and turns and the physical accelerations we feel on a ride. But the narrative does give us moments of spectacle and excitement and also give us a way to experience and contextualize those movements. So again, it's a little bit like seeing a kind of avant-garde modern dance, I suppose.

It can seem a little bit hectic sometimes. But as long as there's a strong underlying narrative we can fall back on, that usually helps take us through the experience as an entire entity. And I've heard that the most exciting part of a ride is usually when you're getting strapped in. Is that not the case? Yeah, some of the experiments I conducted at Alton Towers, particularly on Oblivion, which was the world's first vertical drop roller coaster. We noticed, because I was monitoring the physiology of people getting on a ride, so we were looking

at their heart rate, their galvanic skin response, which is how sweaty their skin becomes, and also looking at their facial expressions. So we had head cameras looking back at their faces. So we were looking at elements of pleasure and arousal. And we were hoping to capture people's experiences as they went over the edge of oblivion. So oblivion's got one feature. You get taken to the edge. Your carriage dangles over. You're held there for two seconds or so looking straight down. The brakes taken off and you go plummeting. And we wanted to compare different people's responses to that moment and compare that against their different personality types. But we had the recorders going all the time. And so before people even got on the ride, we started all the

the medical recording equipment. And we noticed as the bars were being closed over people's shoulders, these restraints, their readings shot up. Their levels of arousal went to, well, the actual feature itself only ever achieved 80% of the levels of arousal that we achieved when we actually locked them into the ride. And we think that that's really to do with the amazing amount of anxiety or anticipation or excitement about what's going to come in the minutes ahead. And also, it's a point of no return because up until that point, you've thought you were going to go to the theme park, you've bought your ticket, you've walked to the ride, every single step along that way, you can always turn back. At that moment, there's a compression of time as that vase coming down. It's the very last second you can say, no, I want to get off.

and then you're locked in. So I think there's this compression of time and commitment to what's going to happen that's what's going on in that moment. It's a compression of experience. And you mentioned that you've captured photos of people's faces. What kind of facial expressions? Do we all pull the same ones?

Because I can imagine we all look horrendous when we're on rollerocases. But is everybody's face doing the same thing and we're going through the same emotions? Well, I've noticed on, well, I've done experiments on people watching horror films, and I've done experiments watching people's faces on roller coasters and other rides. And I expected to see a fairly consistent kind of emotional response between people. But that's, it's really not true. And I can explain it in several ways.

I mean, people's facial expressions have gone through moments. of delight. I mean, we have 43 different muscle groups in the face, and any combination of those can express different emotions that we're feeling inside. And Duchesne was the first person to start logging that, and Charles Darwin in his book, expressions of emotions in humans and animals progressed that thinking. And then more recently, Paul Ekman started to codify it, and that's why computers can now automatically detect human emotional expressions, just looking at these 40 different muscle groups. So I was interesting using those kind of techniques to understand people's emotions on rides. But people's emotions were fluctuating all over the place. If you actually

chart pleasure against arousal and place all the emotions on this chart, people were going, well, particularly in all the extreme emotions, both positive, high levels of pleasure and negative levels of pleasure. And their facial expressions changed. They were constant in flux between extreme excitement, delight, joy, happiness, all the way through to terror, horror, sometimes boredom as well. But the critical thing about thrill is that thrill isn't an emotion itself. It is the change in emotions. And so if there's a rapid and large increase in pleasure and arousal, it's this movement, this dynamic movement, then we get a sensation of thrill. So for me, as a thrill engineer, this was really good news that we've got these rapidly

changing mixed emotions. And in one of the experiments I conducted, one of the very first ones working with a scientist from MIT, who created this galvanic skin response monitoring device, I put people on fairground rides and used the technology to fire a single-use camera to capture portraits of riders. And those 10 portraits from different rides absolutely set in stone this range of different emotional experiences experienced across these different ride types. And that has been mirrors some work that an artist did in New York in the 1960s. He had an exhibition of photographs taken of people at their moment of orgasm. And he showed these photographs without any contextual information.

And the majority of people who saw this experiment thought that people were either being murdered or tortured or in some way experiencing an unpleasurable experience. And it was just because he'd managed to capture the moment either just slightly off or just before. But there's this amazing flux and change in emotions during these very extreme emotional experience. is just incredible. Such a fine line between the fun side of fear and actual kind of believing a real threat. Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that. And that's where, that's where, you know, if I'm working with a university, so I'm currently a professor of creative industries at Middle-Sex University, and if I were to do an experiment through a university, and particularly through a psychology department,

if you say that you're going to make people believe that they're really in danger, you would be in their ethics committees for years. Yet in entertainment, there is, because there's this sort of tacit understanding and a kind of contract that, it's an unspoken contract, it's an unwritten contract between people who go seeking entertainment and those who provide it, the people going into those amusement parts, are saying, I want to be challenged. I want to be taken to the edge, to this dangerous edge, but I trust, as part of this agreement, you are agreeing to ultimately be keeping me safe.

And so I think talking to your friends about those ones who are scared to go on roller coasters, I think you can reassure them with that. I mean, that is the contract that's always being presented between the suppliers of amusement and thrilling experiences and those who seek it. We all know that this is the game, but nobody ever states it. And would you ever put yourself in that thrill-seeker, would you consider yourself a thrill-seeker? Gosh, I'd always thought of myself as a real thrill-seeker. I own a motorbike, but I don't drive daphly.

I'm quite safe on it. I like unusual experiences, but sometimes I'll chicken out. And I have this sort of kind of love-hate with thrill. it's not a love, hate, it's more like a, I think my perceptions of risk are quite low. So the things I'd really love to do, but whether it's social or whether it's actual body harm that I'm worried about, something prevents me. So I'm constantly conflicted, but I do love watching people on rides. And one reason why I've become a thrill engineer is to make experiences for others to experience that I can live vicariously. And this intrigued me, and part of another research project I did, I went to see if I had the thrill-seeking gene, because part of our reasons for thrill-seeking can be put down to genetics as well as personality types.

Yeah, there's a gene on chromosome 11, the gene, the D4DR gene, which is the dopamine receptor gene. So when we experience pleasure, the body releases dopamine. Dopamine binds to the dopamine receptor, which gives us this real sense of euphoria. And this is the reward feedback we get. You know, and it can be a problem because it can lead to addictive behavior, such as addiction to gambling, even drink. But in roller coasters, think about in roller coasters, we rely on this burst of dopamine. But if you have a polymorphism, this is a defect in.

this D40R gene, it means that it can't bind to dopamine as efficiently as other receptors. And so this means that the body needs to produce more dopamine to give the receptors a better chance of picking it up. So which is another reason why people might be termed thrill seekers, but they're not seeking adrenaline. They're not adrenaline junkies. That isn't the bit of thrill. looking for. It's the other part of the emotions. It's the pleasure that they're really missing. So I think there's always a misconception that thrill and adventure seekers are high octane, adrenaline seekers. It's all about doing dangerous things, dangerous sports. Actually, that's only half the picture. And it's the other half of the audience that really intrigued me. It's pleasure

seekers that are the often neglected forms of thrill seeking. So did you find like if you had what your genes. What's a good guess? I'm glad you asked. I did find that I had this polymorphism. I am a bona fide thrill seeker. I kind of like think, am I

are now some form of emotional cripple that I need to go and seek greater extreme experiences that my grandma might have experienced at much lower levels. Maybe I am. But I'm not unusual. In the UK, there are about, I think around one in 30 people,

have this polymorphism, which, you know, if you're at school, you would say in every classroom, there would be one person like you. But when you go to the US in Australia, the proportions about one in 20, and this is thought to be that the people who had this sort of seeking gene were more likely to be adventurers, more likely to go and colonise these other worlds. But then you look at other nations such as China. I think that they're... current stairs about one in 60. And again, they have a very different attitude to adventure and going out and seeking new places. So it's quite fascinating once you start charting on a global scale. Who's got this polymorphism? That's fascinating. I had no idea. There was something, perhaps

there's something I can say is not to blame for my thrility. And so tell me, okay, if I, whenever this happens, whenever I get a chance to do, when I go to a Royal Christian X, where should I sit to get the best thrill out of it. Am I supposed to sit at the front, at the back, on the edge of a row? Oh, right. So if you sit at the front of a roller coaster, if we're just talking about a traditional roller coaster,

you might see on American film, something at Six Flags. If you sit at the front, in fact, actually, the best way to think about a roller coaster is think about where it's centre of masses. So generally, if you sat on a long roller coaster at the centre that will pretty much match your experience if you were sat on a roller coaster and it was

only one car. So that experience of just going around by yourself in one car, much like you might on a ride like Smiler or Oblivion at Alton Towers. If you're on a long roller coaster, if you sit at the front, then your experience precedes the experience of the one at the centre. So for example, you will be 10 metres further. So example, if you're going over an edge, you'll be hanging 10 metres down the front before the entire train starts accelerating away. And similarly, you'll go hurtling over the top of a hill where you'd normally think, I should be slowing down, but you're not, because the rest of the train is still pushing you. So it can be quite disconcerting. At the back of the train, you can actually be whipped around a lot more.

In fact, your speeds at the back feel much greater, even though they're not, because you are doing that thing that you've gone over the hump of the hill, the train's dragging you now down over the other side, and you're accelerating even though you're going up. So it depends what kind of experience. One is, I think at the front is slightly more unnerving and a slightly more out-of-body experience. The experience at the back is much more thrilling and unexpected, but if you want to have a normal, let's say relatively normal experience, and you're a little bit wary of roller coasters, sit in the middle. And when I do get to go out and try this one thrill after a lockdown, what one would you recommend? Gosh, try any thrill or a ride.

Oh, yeah, a ride. Perhaps in the UK that I can go to. Yeah. So I think the most accessible rides, I would, for my money, I would go to the fairground and I would find a ride called the Orbit, which was one of the first fairground rides which didn't just do circles in circles, but the arms raise up and they throw you a little bit like as if somebody was throwing balls around in the air. It's a really compact ride. And so the motions you get are really intense. And when I found out that the people

who invented that ride and manufactured it, actually we're more used to making oil rigs and making oil drilling equipment, I thought, it suddenly all made sense. If you imagine diamond-tipped blades at the end of these arms whizzing around and it boring underneath the channel tunnel, I think you kind of get the idea. So that for me really brings a ride like that to life, and I think they're much more accessible. So if you can go and find your local fairground, find an orbit and get on it. But until that point, what can sensation seekers do in lockdown to get their kicks. Wow. So, well, I'm working on something right now on a thrill ride, which is a virtual-arty thrill ride, but for rowing machines. So once I finish that, anybody will be

able to ride that, and they'll feel like they're propelling themselves around a roller coaster track. So that's one to watch out for. I've seen a lot of people using VR, but I think without movement. I think VR can be, you know, it's like playing a very good computer game. But other thrilling things you can do at home, I think they have to be much more social. So I think finding ways to use telepresence and games. So some people are finding physical board games and physical activities that are combining telepresents, so remote connections between people. And I think that's always, so I'd concentrate more on the social aspect and linking up with people, but trying to think about how to reinterpret existing games. They might be parlour games. I don't know. Can you play a game of

twister with remote distancing over video? I don't know. That was Brendan Walker, explaining how to get maximum thrills out of a rollercoaster ride. The new issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out this week, and in it we find out how dogs can help us lead healthier, longer lives. Otherwise, there are plenty more science and tech stories on ScienceFocus.com. And please let us know what you think of the show with a rating or a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That's it from us this week. I'm off to find out when the nearest theme park opens book my tickets. Goodbye. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's bestselling sites and technology monthly,

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