An EKstreme Adventure (Part 1)

The EKstreme Wanderers tried the different stomach-lurching, brain-shaking, jaw-locking rides in Enchanted Kingdom.

1. EKstreme

Don isn't as brave as this what this picture depicts. Arriane and Sharmaine were the ones to try EKstreme. This outrageous disc will take you feet up in the air and when you're on the highest altitude, the "Earth is going to suck you to its core!" Nah, kidding. You'll experience an EKstreme free-fall though.


The Physics Behind:
Free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only or dominant force acting upon it, at least initially. Near the surface of the Earth, an object in free fall in a vacuum will accelerate at approximately 9.8 m/s², independent of its mass. With air resistance acting upon an object that has been dropped, the object will eventually reach a terminal velocity, around 56 m/s (200 km/h or 120 mph) for a human body.

Free fall without air resistance is behind Galileo's experiment when he proved that all objects will drop at the same time on the ground regardless of the mass.

In this ride, however, free fall does not act alone. The falling is still somehow controlled by machines. If not, they would have already smashed right through the ground.

Poor Don. All he could do is watch from below. Screw you Acrophobia!

2. Anchors Away!

Finally, Don conjured up some guts to take on Anchor's Away. Mark the Moo-mar shows up again and persuades Don to sit with him in thee edge of the ship.After riding, however, Don pledged not to ride Anchors Away ever again. You wouldn't want to hear his monologue inside the ship. Just ask Mark. ;)

The Physics Behind:
Anchors Away takes the motion of a pendulum. A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely.
When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position. When released, the restoring force combined with the pendulum's mass causes it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth. The time for one complete cycle, a left swing and a right swing, is called the period. A pendulum swings with a specific period which depends (mainly) on its length.
Real pendulums are subject to friction and air drag, so the amplitude of their swings declines.

Due to friction and air drag, the ship does not continuously swing back and forth. It stops after a few swings - fortunately for Don as we had overheard him cursing the ship. *oops*.

3. Flying Fiesta

Don (in 2nd picture) and Sharmaine (you could make her out in the 3rd picture) decided to try the Flying Fiesta. Here, they are strapped on to a "swing" attached to the roof of a circularly moving disc and is deliberately being sent away while buckled up. Hence they don't detach from the "flying circular motion".

The Physics Behind:
Any motion in a curved path represents accelerated motion, and requires a force directed toward the center of curvature of the path. This force is called the centripetal force which means "center seeking" force. Centripetal force is a force that makes a body follow a curved path: it is always directed orthogonal to the velocity of the body, toward the instantaneous center of curvature of the path.

Illustrative example:

A ball is tethered to a rotational axis and is rotating counterclockwise around the specified path at a constant angular rate ω. The velocity of the ball is a vector tangential to the orbit, and is continuously changing direction, a change requiring a radially inward directed centripetal force. The centripetal force is provided by the tether, which is in a state of tension.

Imagine that the people buckled up are the ball and they are tethered to the center by the swing buckles. They seemingly move away from the center because of the velocity that it tangential to the orbit. The swing buckles, however acts as the centripetal force which moves them towards the center, hence the slanted appearance in which they are inclined to the center head-on.

Centripetal force also acts on road curves and in this picture's case, river curves. This prevents the riders, like Arriane from flying away outside the borders of Rio Grande Rapids.

Part 2 narrates more of the team's mayhem in EK!