Children on a playground may not know the laws of physics, but they’re using them when they intuitively lean back to get a swing moving higher
and observations of swingers to determine some rules for how to make a swing go higher.
The researchers worked out equations for the swing’s motion that accounted for the person on it being able toat any point in the swing’s arc. They then solved these equations for different sizes of swings and various sequences of the person’s upper body motions, and determined which combination made the swing gain the most altitude from one back-and-forth oscillation to the next.The researchers found that the best time to lean back depends on how high the swing is going already.
Hirata and his colleagues then wanted to see how their model stacked up against real-world playground swinging, so they built a swing in the lab and recruited 10 college students to try it. All of them said they had played on swings before but were never explicitly taught how to move to get the swing to go higher.
The researchers attached a total of 10 special markers to both the swing and the participant, and then recorded their swinging with a camera for about a minute at a time. When they analysed the footage, the researchers saw that what the students were doing matched the rules derived from their mathematical model.Hirata says that this agreement leads to more questions.
The researchers’ current hypothesis is that swingers are subconsciously reacting to some centrifugal-like force that is pushing them back. They want to test this idea by having students use a playground swing in virtual reality where those forces may not exist.
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