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Perpetual Skislope
the hollow room writes: "How about skiing on a never ending slope? A story at New Scientist suggests that some fool is going to try to build one of these. Built like a huge tilted record player, it can spin at up to 30 km/h.
Any takers?"
When this thing is running at full tilt, how the hell do you get off it? Or worse yet, where do you go if you fall, as is sure to happen.
:p Be nice if the article was more than a brief overview.
Seems to me there's a lot of issues with physics involved as well, ignoring the problems of getting the thing to actually operate.
People learn to ski on solid, non moving surfaces. What happens when you try to stop.. do you overbalance and fall down? Or how about the race track problem.. you're always turning left, cuz if you turn right you run into the wall.
Basically I see this thing creating more questions than solutions.
So how do I get onto this thing? It seems like it would be hard to get started on it since it's constantly moving - and even harder to get off of it.
It would also get pretty boring to ski around in a circle for hours on end... no new scenery. If they put up a big contiguous screen along the edges, and maybe some of the sky too, to prevent you from getting quite so dizzy and provide some additional entertainment.
Then again you could also just go VR skiing and never have to go outside or worry about all these physical limitations.
well, actually, a skier's top speed is mostly determined by the slope of the run, weight of the skiier, type of skis etc. your maximum speed relative to the track would be no different on the inside or outside. of course, if you ski too fast on the inside then you get to the bottom. ski too slow on the outside and you would rise to top.
"However, Nenad Bicanic of the University of Glasgow says that the structure may be feasible. But he says precautions would be needed to ensure skiers could not be pulled into the mechanism at the top of the slope."
I think I'll let them work the bugs out first.
I suppose he wont be skiing straight down so he will need to make turns. Yet when he is making turns, if he is on one side of the slope it will be moving faster under him then if he is on the other side. I have a feeling this discrepency will quickly cause him to fall.
No chairlifts sounds nice. If you out-ski the turntable you just pull off to the side and ride to the top, then hit the trail again.
But chairlifts also meter traffic. I'm talking out my butt here, but I'm sure that ski slopes do some kind of calculations involving skiers/hour and trail capacity. Without a traffic limiter, the turntable could get 'too busy' on heavy days.
What this guy has in mind is like an upended record, on a much larger scale, more terrain to move about in, but ultimately still what I would consider a dull experience. Probably good for teaching beginners and little else, since the inside and outside of the track would be moving at different rates you'd get pretty good at turning one way, but would find difficulty adjusting to a real slope. Nothing like screwing up your motor skills and equilibrium.
IMHO it looks terrible. I'm sure it'll be a hit.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm not sure I get the physics involved in this assertion, but it seems like it you could discourage people hitting the spindle by building up the middle of the disk such that you have to ski "uphill" to get to it.
I play Nerd-Folk!