Stuff You Should Know - How Water Slides Work

Episode Date: April 28, 2015

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and 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. The Waterslide Edition. Yeah man, you like waterslides? Who doesn't? Nobody. Pretty much. Waterslides are fun. I used to go to Whitewater here in Atlanta growing up.

I haven't been in years and years to a water park. I would like to go though. Oh you're going to go again? Yeah, I mean I don't 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 an adult 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? Well, I think it's a German name, isn't it? Yeah, Schlitterbond. And you know why it's German? Why? Because German invented the Waterslide. Okay, I was looking this up. I was looking all over for the first waterslide. I think I found it. I want to hear. All right. And it was fairly recent too. Like I thought waterslides,

probably the 1400s is what I would have guessed. Nope, I was way off. Well, this 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 waterslides around the world too that people take advantage of. 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 1923 with Herbert Selna, who was actually an American.

I thought he was German. Where? Well, this was in Minnesota. He invented the water toboggan slide. And they got to use it two days out of the year. And I think it was more, it was a sled type deal. And then I saw one in England or in the 1930s or so, where it was the same deal. It was like a little flat bottom boat that, you know, in England they still had on their full, they weren't even like in bathing gear. They're like in their, their full suits and monocles and frocks sitting in this boat. So it was basically a little flat bottom boat that would go down a slide and then skitter across the water. Like the log ride or something like that. Yeah. I guess that's a water slide. Except way more dangerous, I would guess, because it's the 1920s. Yeah, exactly. So

I thought the Providence was even more recent than that. I thought it was the 1970s. 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 70s is the earliest I found. Well, I didn't find the Minnesota one. You didn't find the Minnesota. I didn't. Well, here's, did you read that story, the history of water parks? Yeah, man. You came up with this great article from Grantland, which is a publication that has some really good long form articles in general, but this one in particular was really cool. And it is, what is it called? Do you remember the wet stuff, the way I'm playing on the right stuff?

Sure. Yeah. Like the original astronauts. Exactly. Of water parks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in this case, George Millay in 1974 was sort of the inventor and main thief that built the water park by stealing a bunch. And this, I don't know, there were water slides because he would travel all over the country and they'd be like, oh, there's this concrete water slide. Yeah. 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 it not like tear your skin up? No. Really? Yeah. It's like a concrete swimming pool.

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. Right. And then these were the ones you needed the little mat to sit on. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. It's going to say like you just stand up in the bottom of your swimming trunks to be totally shredded. So Millay had the original idea when he went to a wave pool 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. Let's bring it all together. Let's bring it all together. And he did. He was the guy who made Wet and Wild. Yeah. Well, he was originally the creator of SeaWorld and then left SeaWorld in 1974.

He was forced out. Yeah. I get the feeling that he was not an easy guy to work with. No. Supposedly in this Grantland article, supposedly he had red hair and his face would get just as red when he'd start yelling. Yeah. Which was a lot. Yeah. So he said, let's bring this all together. Let's go inland to where people don't have access to beaches and things, which makes sense. Make human-made beaches. Yeah. With these wave pools. And he was rebuffed by investors at first because they were like, no one's going to pay to swim, you big dummy. Yeah. That's a 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 the early investors. Not all of them. He managed to raise like three million bucks. Yeah. Or there'd be like community pools and things. Yeah. But not like a theme park just without roller coasters and rides. Right. People thought he was nuts. Yeah. So he built it anyway in Orlando. He called it Wet and Wild because he said, apparently in a meeting, the name's got to be Wet and Wild. And they're like, how about that? We're ready to go home. Pretty much. You've been yelling at us all day. The centerpiece of Wet and Wild was the wave pool.

Yeah. Which, you know, it's like that. Well, it's a wave pool. It's a pool that creates waves, which was a huge deal. And that's the one. Yeah. That's what he saw in Decatur, Alabama in 1974, right? Yeah. That's the thing that kicked it all off. Exactly. And like you said, it was the centerpiece. So when you came into Wet and Wild in Orlando on International Drive, that was the first thing you saw. And it was meant to kind of bowl you over a little bit, like, oh my gosh. It's a human-made beach. I'm trying to discontinue my use of man-made, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. Sure. It's really easy to say too, because you're human-made. You grow up saying that. But yeah, human-made. It's harder to say. It's harder to remember.

So I'm training myself. Yeah. Good job. I'm going to start that too now. But you're going to say human-made, right? Maybe. You and Terry grows. So the idea was pretty great, but it didn't take off at first. He lost about 400 grand in his first year, because people were used to roller coaster 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, the ones who went. What is this again? Yeah, the parents who went, though, were like, this is kind of awesome, actually. Yeah. But getting them there at first was a lot harder than he anticipated. Yeah. He figured out, though,

that there was kind of a dual attractiveness to a water park, depending on your age. Yeah. So like if you're a teenager, you wanted something fast and scary and fun and girls and bathing suits. Sure. Sure. 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 and worn out, but your kid still has tons of energy. So they're running around. You don't feel like running around. You feel like sitting in a wave pool. You feel like sitting on a lounge chair, or you feel like, and this is an idea he ripped off from, I think, Sri Lanka or something like that. Which one? The Lazy River? The Lazy

River. Yeah. 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 to propel yourself. You just get in this river 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, the guys, the humans building this thing was like, well, yeah, well, we can build a river like you get in one and get out the other. And he's like, no, no, no, no. This thing is fully enclosed. You never have to get out if you don't want to. Right. He's like, do I have to explain the concept of infinity to you?

So they build it shaped like the infinity sign that got fired. But yeah, because in the middle, they'd all just bumped together. They glutenated. Traffic jam. So I mentioned him stealing. Everyone was stealing because after this, water parks started opening up. It was the 70s. Everybody was stealing. Yeah. All over the country. And they stole their names. Like every water park in the world has the same like 20 words over and over to describe their rides. And they all just nicked from each other like flumes and raging and wild and splash and storm and typhoon. Or in his case, the kamikaze. Well, yeah, that was the first really big in the States at least. I think he

stole it from somewhere overseas. I think he stole it from Japan actually. It was Japan. That's right. Yeah. Which is appropriate and highly inappropriate to have named it the kamikaze. Absolutely. But it was the first really tall water slide in the United States. And the way that it was allowed to be made really tall was because he used fiberglass, which revolutionized water parks. Because again, they would use skin shredding concrete that had some real serious structural limitations. Like you had to build it into a hill. So you had to 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. Yeah. And it was basically like a beacon. Like come check this out, you 12 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. Right. So it's basically self made advertising and marketing. Right. So they also found that they could make a lot of money doing other things like selling concessions. And at first they would put the concessions all near the lockers because you're not going to 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 and these some of these rides. So they sold a lot of one piece bathing suits once people got there. And it was kind of genius. They were making money hand over fist at a certain point. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why I think the 70s are possibly the greatest decade of all time. The water park was established in the 70s. Wet and wild. Yeah. So these days, there are some really, really innovative slides going on. And we'll talk about those later. Sure. First let's take a break and then we'll get back to like how water slides actually work. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV

moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, I promise physics and we're going to deliver on physics. Yeah, buddy. 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, when you're at the top and you're just sitting there,

you, like a slinky, have a lot of potential energy. That's right. 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 slide pushing up. And 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 to a lower place. Yeah. And aided the whole time, I guess combating friction, you're aided by the water, of course. Right. That's

going to 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 slides. Yes. And the higher 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 my butt leaving the slide. The concrete slide. Yeah. I mean, no, no, this is, but when they were fiberglass at this point. Okay, good. But yeah, like zero friction because I'm airborne slightly. Right. 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 of a sudden you have angles introduced to the physics and curves and inertia. And so they realized we got to build these walls up pretty high on some of these curves because your inertia, you're working against your own inertia. It's taking you one direction and then boom, you're taking a hard left turn. Your body still wants to go that direction. Right. Exactly. And that's why you'll fly out. The slide says, no, no, we're going this 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. Yeah. Which is also a feature. Like they have some that have like, well, it'll be dark and they'll have lights inside the tube and, you know, they'd guss you them up over the years. Right. They clean up real nice. So, well, that's pretty much the physics of water slides. There's not a whole lot else to know about it. Except for that. Well, there's the water break. That's another feature. Oh, okay. So you made mention of like people being thrown all over the place. Yeah. There's a story in that Grantland article where George Malay was showing, I guess, an investor or something like that. Yeah. This new slide and had one of his

teenage employees go down the slide and at the bottom of the slide, the collecting pool. Well, before the collecting pool, there's supposed to be a dip which is filled with water and that serves as the water break. Yeah. Then you've 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, I don't think that's supposed to happen, right? You may want to check your numbers, Malay. 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. Yeah. 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 water slide designers working today. Yeah. A guy named Jeff Henry. Yes. Jeff Henry's family owned like a campground in the 60s, I think, in Texas. In Texas. And 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. From the second floor, I think, of one of the cabins down. Yeah, not a water slide. No. At this point. Until Jeff added the water break feature. And that became like a standard feature for all water slides. Yeah. It started out on a regular slide. Yeah.

And he's the guy that basically saw what Malay was doing and said, I can, like he wasn't too impressed with Malay and said, I see what you're doing, but I can do this a lot better. Yeah. And I think his parks today are some of the coolest ones, right? Well, yeah. He's working. And he co-owns the one in Kansas City. Oh, the one with the German name. Yeah. I don't know why the name won't stick in my head. Schlitterbahn. Schlitterbahn. You don't know why that doesn't stick. I mean, it's so memorable. Sure. Schlitterbahn. That's the one that has the tallest one in the world now, right? Yeah. So the tallest one in the world is called Verucht, which is German for crazy or insane. And how high is it? 168 feet and seven inches tall. The second place one is called

Kilimanjaro. It's in Brazil. It's 164 feet. The third one is also in Brazil. It's called Insano. It's at 135 feet. That's really tall, man. Oh, yeah. Do they have little elevators for those? Do you know where you... I think you have to climb up, which makes the whole thing even scarier, really. Yeah. That's, to me, the worst part about the water park is, and it even puts it this way in this article, the potential energy is you climbing steps. Right. That's how you develop that potential energy. And the higher up you go, the higher you climb, the more potential energy you have, which means the more is released and transferred to kinetic, which is scary. But you're right. It does build up like as you go. I imagine you're like, man, I've climbed a lot

of steps here. I can see really, really far. Yeah. One of the cool things about that Grantland article too, by the way, Chuck, is at the top, rather than a photo, they have like a GIF that's a POV video of going down baruched. It's pretty neat. Yeah. It's cool. And I believe that is also one that uses, is that a water coaster? So that is the latest and greatest feature going is someone at some point said, and it was probably, what's his name? Jeff. Jeff Henry. Did he invent the water coaster? I believe so. He said, you know, this is neat, but it'd be really neat if you go up and down and you didn't just go down and stop. And maybe a little hill here and there, but he invented, I guess the water, was it called the water cannon? 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 like the chains that clink you up on a roller coaster. It serves the exact same purpose. Exactly. So with the addition of these water blasters that move you along, it's just completely opened up the field of water slides. It's just no longer using gravity to push you down. So Chuck, with a water slide, 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. Yeah. The fiberglass pieces are designed, for the most part, there's companies that design water slides for water parks. Rare is the water park that designs

its own slides, but Jeff Henry and his co-owner of Schlitterbond in Kansas City. Yeah. What is the guy's name? Do they design these together? Yes. John Schoolie is 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, if you own a water park or something, you'll contract out the whole thing. Design, building, implementation, all that stuff. That'd be a fun job. But this one of the things that makes these two some of the foremost designers is because they're not only owners of water parks, they're designing it themselves, they're testing it out themselves, so they're

really putting a lot of thought into the water features that they're coming up with. Well, it's been his life since the 60s, you know. Yeah. This is passion. Yeah. All right. So like you said, they are dozens and dozens of fiberglass pieces that just fit together, like you said, like a little car track. You got a raised 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 single slide feel to that. Right. On your bottom half. Yes. You don't want your butt like bumping against every, you know, every time there's a new section. No. And then you have some steel that holds the thing up and there you go. You've got the world's tallest water slide. One of the things,

though, besides physical harm that you have to combat as a water park owner is also pee. Yeah. Sure. Have you ever seen that South Park or the water park? The concentration of pee is so much that it flips over and there's a chain reaction and everything turns to pee and like they're trapped in this water park and can't get out because everything is pee. Oh, wow. It's so gross. Do they have measures in place for pee now or is it just massive amounts of filtration and chemicals? Right. Just like in a pool. Exactly. Right. But one of the ways that you combat this is to keep water circulating all the time. You don't want it to stagnate. And the other bonus 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 drain. Sure. A water slide is basically a closed circuit. And actually most water parks or at least several of the features in a water park are closed systems themselves. Yeah. 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 houses and how that all works right after this break. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this.

We have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and

Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Josh, you mentioned pumps. This water doesn't move itself. I mean, gravity helps on the way down. Yeah, I guess it does.

You need to get it up to the top of the slide in order 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 the pool that's at the bottom of the water slide that they fall into. 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 it more technologically advanced than this. But at their basis, the water is run through a layer of sand and a layer of gravel. Yeah. And the edges of the sand and the gravel pick out fine particulate matter, hopefully proteins from urine. Yeah. And the water, the clean water,

the cleaner water is run through the other end and up to the water slide. And then down again. Yeah. And most of these slides, especially the ones where you have to work water all the way up to the top, have 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 all hang out, because that's what all water park employees do, right? Sure. It's like summer camp. Yeah. The water stays at the top. It stays in that pipe. It doesn't flow backward, because then you would have to work to get it all pumped back up to the top again every morning. Time is money. 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. Oh, too much pizza. They turn on that pump switch, and the water is just right there at the top ready to be squirted back out. Backwashing is a very important feature. If you've ever worked at a pool or owned a pool, you know how to backwash. And that is another 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 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. Sure. Evaporation. Sure. All that stuff. And as much pee as they're adding, they still need to add water, which is good. Did you read the bit on Action Park? Yeah, man. So this is pretty cool. I read and watched that documentary about a year ago, and it was amazing. I can't say enough about the Mashable. Did they actually do the documentary? I think they hosted it. Okay. 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 70s until I think 1996. Yeah. And it had such a horrible track record of causing

injuries and just being insanely flagrant with safety violations. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It had the name Traction Park. Yeah. And there's a legend that this Mashable article, or was it the New York Post, which now I'm questioning the veracity of this legend, but that Action Park bought ambulances for the local township. Oh, really? Because they used them so much. Well, it's pretty cool. If you watch the documentary, it interviews, it details the features of the park, which are all seem like you were teetering on the edge of injury at all times. Yeah. 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. Yeah. They had really cool rides, too. Like, they had a water slide that made a complete loop. Yeah. 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. It seems like the way Action Park was laid out, it wasn't like, it was a sort of piece meal. Like, this thing looks like it was just built in a parking lot. 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 was a problem. Yeah, it didn't always spit you out the other end. You might get stuck or broken or whatever in the loop. Yeah, it seems pretty great, though. Like,

everyone across the board had fond memories. And I know in the 70s, we all, like, had ourselves in the back for having, you know, we didn't survive. Yeah, we didn't have bicycle helmets, and like, we were all dangerous, and our parents didn't care. But that sort of was the heyday, you know? Yeah. Like, when kids were just left through their own devices, and apparently everyone that worked there, it was just like a really fun time. Right. Like, the lifeguard's a party in. And the kids were partying. It was just a good old time at Action Park. Yeah. But they're bringing it back now, right? They are. After this, this documentary went viral. And it's like a web documentary. I don't think it's feature length or anything like that. But the once it went viral,

the former owners were like, Oh, okay, well, I guess there's still demand for Action Park. So they bought back the old Action Park. And it's the family business, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they basically said the recent owners, who they sold it to back in the 90s, made everything way too safe. They've said about making the rides more dangerous, which is nuts. Yeah, they're probably walking that fine line. Especially these days. Yeah, litigation and kids feeling like they're, you know, in peril. Yeah, makes it more exciting. I came across another article 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 injury rate, the incident rate for sure.

So there was a study in New Jersey, which is where Action Park is. Yeah. But the study is between 2007 and 2012. So this is why 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 were water park attractions. Yeah. Whereas only like 39 incidents were due to roller coasters. So like 120 out of like 500 something were things like 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 with a roller coaster, you're generally looking at some

sort of a malfunction, mechanical malfunction that causes injury. But water 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 it's, yeah, you're taking a tumble and breaking a leg or something. Yeah. Good times. Yeah. I can't wait to go again. I got one last step for you. What you got? There are 1200 water parks in North America. Wow. You know how many in the rest of the world? 720. Wow, really? Yeah. Crazy. It's a North American tradition. It is. 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. Oh yeah. You basically

get 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 others would get in and then you'd wait like 30 seconds or whatever. And then you'd jump in the Lazy River and they'd have a little head start. And you would, we would spend hours, dude, playing hide and go seek in this thing because you would just creep along behind some, you know, some big fat guy 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 and 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. I enjoyed that. I think we would spend like half our day doing that because

we realized standing in line for a water slide is for the birds. Yes. Stinks. We'll make our own fun. Yeah. Look at girls, but not talk to them. They're scary. You got anything else? No. And this is when I was in my 30s, 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 circle of life will be complete. You can also type water slides into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this from our buddy Murph, Tyler Murphy. All you had to say was Murph. Yeah. He's our friend that's a teacher. Yeah. And send us stuff sometimes. Yeah. And part-time putt-putt golf course worker. And he wrote in

about slinkies. He said, hey, guys, as you know, I teach history and science. In science class, I do use a slinky to demonstrate concepts in physics that they may find hard to understand. What I do is I hold up a slinky for the class to see. It is uncompressed or slinked. And I ask the students what they think will happen if I drop it. The 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. Then I use their cell phones or my cell phone and record the drop in slow motion to demonstrate the fact that information of an object state takes time to permeate. This is what you're talking about, remember? Yeah. And what this means for the

slinky to know that when it's dropped, it takes time to move as a wave through the slinky until the status quo of the slinky's ends are matched. Status quo, is that science? Maybe political science. Basically one end of the slinky moves and falls while 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 kids are amazed and delighted, I'm sure. Yeah, finally. So that is slow motion camera fun. That is from Tyler Murphy and thanks, Murph. 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 SYSK

podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email of support to stuff podcast at how stuff works.com. And as always, you can support us at our home on the web stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works.com. Attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all it's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.