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?"

Comments

what if the "record" gets a "scratch" ;)

[Xzzy]

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.

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. :p Be nice if the article was more than a brief overview.

Chairlifts...

[Chazmati]

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.

Re:The perpetual slope already exists

[ackthpt]

They have one here in the Calif. central coast area I live in, at a snow board shop. Ok if you want to keep in practice or get ready for the real thing, but no substitute for it. You just stand in place and move from side to side.

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.

So have it slope up towards the middle?

[GlenRaphael]

[due to the "skating force"] Skiers would be drawn toward the middle of the disk and would have to be constantly turning outward to avoid hitting the spindle at the center of the terrain.

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.