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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: back to Park (ID:fanpu2019), author: qu Lijian

The pursuit of excitement is human instinct.

The history of roller coaster

Russian ice slide, the predecessor of the roller coaster, the predecessor of the roller coaster is the ice slide, which is an exciting activity carried out by Russians as early as the 15th century. The ice slide is made of wood, and the wooden ramp is covered with ice and snow. The man climbed up the wooden steps to the top of the slide at the height of seven or eight stories, then sat on the sleigh and slid down a slope of about 50 degrees.

Cool and exciting, the feeling of flying.

By the 18th century, Russia made ice slides more exciting. The slide is no longer just a section, but a multi-segment joint slide. Cross the river according to the mountain, in the magnificent landscape, rush down a slide, and then rush up and down a slide. Colorful flags flutter during the day and torches are bright at night on the ice slide. Skating is not enough during the day, but keep skating at night.

The ice slide also entered the czar's court, and princes, nobles, dignitaries and dignitaries did not hesitate to seek stimulation.

Russian ice slides have been gradually introduced into Western Europe, and there has been some progress in design.

Russian Mountain, the ancestor of the roller coaster. In 1804, Paris, France, built a slide and wheeled the sleigh and named it "Russian Mountain" (French name "Les Montagnes Russes"). This slide is regarded as the ancestor of the modern roller coaster.

The car slide gets rid of the shackles of nature and can be played not in winter.

"Russian Mountain" is not only exciting, but also more dangerous, with endless injury accidents. Paradoxically, it was more attractive to play at that time.

In 1817, the French made improvements, with stronger wheels and tracks on the slopes. Paris, which is called "aerial Walk" (French name "The Promenades- A é riennes"), is considered to be the first modern roller coaster in history.

"aerial Walk" (French name "The Promenades- A é riennes"), the first modern roller coaster. In 1846, Paris changed the ramp again, adding a circular track up to 4 meters in diameter.

In 1887, a large car slide was built in the Belleville region of Paris, consisting of four sections of figure-8 tracks, 200m long, called Belleville Russian Mountain (French name: Montagnes Russes de Belleville).

During the period from the end of the 19th century to World War I, scientific and technological progress, economic take-off, no large-scale war, known as the "good era" in Europe, car slides became more and more popular.

Belleville Russian Mountain in French and Spanish, the roller coaster is called "Russian Mountain". In Russia, the roller coaster is called "American Mountain". Because the Americans carried forward the roller coaster and sent it back to Russia.

In the 1850s, an abandoned mountain railway in Pennsylvania was used to seek excitement. Sit in the car and get off the track. This kind of entertainment is called "gravity railway" (Gravity railroad).

Gravity Railway inspired the businessman and inventor Ramakus Thompson. Thompson designed the zigzag railway and put it into commercial operation on Coney Island in New York in 1884.

The real roller coaster finally came out.

Thompson's business was so successful that he recovered all the costs in the first week of business.

Ramakus Thompson (March 8, LaMarcus Adna Thompson,1848-May 8, 1919) is an American entrepreneur, inventor and father of modern roller coasters.

Schematic diagram of zigzag railway invented by Thompson

In 1884, a zigzag railway entertainment facility on Coney Island, New York. Thompson's success attracted imitators. Coney Island has become a testing ground for roller coasters, with innovative, grotesque and dangerous ones.

Someone unexpectedly designed a kind of cannon roller coaster, the body of which was shot out with a cannon, flew for a distance and landed on another track. But the roller coaster failed in the end.

The circular roller coaster test was successful, but the safety and experience were poor, the business was not successful, and the passenger flow was too small to make ends meet.

The person who didn't make money on the circular track that year made a substantial improvement on the roller coaster was John Miller of Thompson. In his life, he has more than 100 patents on roller coasters, designed and participated in the design of more than 150 roller coasters.

Miller first greatly improved the safety of the roller coaster and redesigned various tracks to make the roller coaster faster and more exciting. Miller is known as "the father of modern high-speed roller coasters."

John Miller (John Mueller 1872-June 24, 1941) is an American roller coaster designer, inventor and entrepreneur. The roller coaster boomed until the Great Depression of 1929, the golden age of roller coasters, with more than 1500 roller coasters built around the world. Many roller coaster designers have made a fortune and left behind ideas.

Designer Harry Traver began to consider abandoning wooden tracks and switching to steel tracks. But before his vision was spread out on a large scale, the Great Depression came.

After the outbreak of World War II, the roller coaster had no tourists, so it had to stop operation or even be dismantled.

After the end of World War II, the United States prospered, and the average family had both money and leisure. Having an insight into people's needs, Disney started to build Disneyland and built a new roller coaster in it.

Disneyland Matterhon roller coaster, ushering in the era of steel rail roller coaster. In 1959, the roller coaster at Disneyland in California was built in the form of Matterhorn Peak in the Swiss Alps. Its biggest innovation is to abandon the wooden track and adopt the steel track.

Steel tracks make it easy to design more difficult tracks. Since then, a variety of creative tracks continue to appear, roller coasters faster, higher, longer, continue to surpass themselves, ushered in a heyday.

The Decepticons roller coaster at the Beijing Global Resort, which began operation in 2021, enjoys speeding up the roller coaster. The first principle is that the human body responds to changing forces and stimulates the body to secrete neurochemicals such as epinephrine and dopamine.

The person on the roller coaster is subjected to the force of the roller coaster. According to Newton's second law, the total acceleration minus the gravitational acceleration is divided by the gravitational acceleration, which is called G force.

For the safety of tourists, there are regulations on the magnitude of G force in the relevant standards of roller coaster.

The G force is a vector and is generally decomposed in the biomechanical coordinate system (Biomechanical coordinate system). The definition of the biomechanical coordinate system is shown in figure 1:

Fig. 1 biomechanical coordinate system

Fig. 2 the oval chart shows the maximum value of each component of the roller coaster G force. The inside of the oval chart shows the actual value of a roller coaster. The safety range of the roller coaster G force by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is shown in an egg chart, as shown in figure 2.

There is also a limit on the duration of G-force for tourists. Globe 6, duration shall not exceed 1 second, and duration shall not exceed 2 seconds. The smaller the G, the longer it is allowed to last. Figure 3 shows the G force record of a roller coaster. The maximum G force is 4 and the duration is less than 6 seconds specified in the standard.

Fig. 3 the change of G force with time during the descent of a roller coaster. The rate of change of G force over time, that is, the derivative of acceleration to time, is called rapidity. ) there are also restrictions. According to the ISO standard, the maximum rapidity is 15g / s in the acceleration stage and 0.8g / s in the deceleration stage. As you can see, the roller coaster in figure 3 meets this requirement.

When you ride a roller coaster, you don't have to bother to measure acceleration to see if the roller coaster is up to standard. Roller coaster is a special equipment, the state strict supervision, it can be believed that the operation of the roller coaster is unlikely to have catastrophic accidents.

All you have to do is feel the pleasure, yell, and enjoy the acceleration.

When you dive down the roller coaster, you will feel the organs in your body move.

Your body is not monolithic. As you accelerate, each part of your body accelerates separately. The seat pushes your back, the back muscles push your organs, and these organs push the organs in front of them.

If you do freefall (when the G force is close to 0 or-1 in figure 3), all parts of your body will no longer be pushed around and fall alone. You will feel that you are floating inside you.

You can also have a more intuitive sense of the equivalence of gravity and inertial mass. It was after Einstein figured it out that he soon completed the general theory of relativity.

If there is a change in force, it will feel more exciting. Please be prepared to get on the circular track.

In the early 20th century, the circular track was circular, and at the bottom of the track, the acceleration was so large that it was very uncomfortable, and the acceleration changed so violently that it was easy to sprain tourists. Now the circular orbit is no longer a regular circle, but a teardrop shape, with a larger curvature than a smaller one, reducing the rate of acceleration change.

What is more exciting is that the roller coaster can also roll along the track, sometimes above the track, sometimes under the track.

Guangzhou Changlong roller coaster roller coaster psychology roller coaster swept the world, many amusement parks roller coaster often have "wait in line for two hours, ride for two minutes" pageant. Why do we humans like to ride roller coasters?

One obvious answer is the pursuit of excitement. In psychological terms, it is for sensation seeking (sensation seeking). Sensation seeking means that individuals seek changeable, new, complex, strong feelings and experiences, and take physical, social, legal, economic and other aspects of risk-taking behavior to obtain the personality traits of the above experience. Sensation seeking consists of four parts, namely, stimulus and adventure seeking, experience seeking, desensitization and desensitization.

To put it bluntly, it is death.

Roller coaster ride obviously belongs to the thrill and adventure seeking, and rock climbing, diving, skydiving, death selfie, etc., fall into the same category.

What does the roller coaster rely on to stimulate people?

The intuitive answer is speed, but psychologists have found that there is insufficient evidence that speed is directly related to sensation seeking. For example, many car racing parties do not seek sensation, and some take risks in specific situations.

Psychologists believe that roller coasters are stimulated by fear, just like watching horror movies. Fear raises glucose levels in the body, leading to physiological conditions such as heartbeat, wheezing and vitality, which is psychologically called "fight or flight response" (fight or flight response). Studies have shown that roller coaster rides can produce this response.

Can fighting or flight responses and sensory stimuli coexist in a safe environment?

The study of bungee jumping found that the two can coexist. After bungee jumping, novice bungee jumpers not only feel refreshed and excited, but also have elevated levels of endorphins in the blood, a famous happy substance secreted by the brain.

Bungee jumpers also have higher levels of cortisol in their blood, and people secrete more cortisol when they feel stressed. Can people feel anxious and happy at the same time?

The answer is that people's stress is not all bad, good stress is called positive stress (Eustress, also known as benign stress).

Roller coaster passengers will also feel positive pressure. When Dutch scientists studied the relationship between asthma and stress, they found that asthma symptoms were alleviated after volunteers with asthma rode a roller coaster. The researchers believe that the reason is that they experience positive stress.

I don't know, can riding a roller coaster become a treatment for asthma, two laps and a course of treatment?

Not everyone likes to ride a roller coaster, and individual differences may be explained by brain chemistry. In addition to endorphins, the brain secretes another happy substance, dopamine. High levels of endorphins are more likely to be a natural response to "dangerous situations" experienced by the body, while people with high levels of dopamine are more likely to seek stimuli, such as roller coasters, drug use and theft.

At present, psychology can not answer the real psychological reason why people enjoy the roller coaster. Perhaps there is no single reason, but the comprehensive effect of many factors, such as high-speed passion, overcoming fear, physiological stimulation and so on.

In this day and age, it is actually lucky for mankind to be gentle, safe and even boring. Fortunately, we can also spend a little money to secrete epinephrine, endorphins and dopamine in a very safe environment to experience stimulation, happiness and pleasure. Our ancestors had to be alert to or deal with danger before they could feel the experience of these hormones.

references

Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_coaster

Https://www.britannica.com/topic/roller-coaster#ref910739

Https://physicsworld.com/a/twists-turns-thrills-and-spills-the-physics-of-rollercoasters/

Phys. Educ. 2020,55,065012

Https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-roller-coasters-99166

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