POWER: blog 5 :)

My friends and I have a special tradition where if one of us has a birthday coming up, the rest of the group plans a day of surprises for them. My friend Chelsea's birthday was during the beginning of july, and was the last of our group's sweet 16s. After secretly coordinating the day with her parents, we successfully blindfolded her and led her into the car for the start of our day of surprises :) After the hour long road trip, we finally made it to our destination- WET N WiLD :)

We spent the whole day floating in hurricane bay, sliding down the shaka, and tanning under the sun. What I didn't realize at the time, was that physics was responsible for a lot of the fun we had racing down the waterslides.
Power (Watts) = Work (Joules) over Time (Seconds)
Work is equivalent to net force times displacement, and in this scenario, the net force was equal to the force of the current of the water pushing us down the slides, minus the friction of the floaties against the water and the bottom of the slide. Displacement was equal to the length of the silde (in meters) and the time was the amount of time taken from the beginning to the end of the slide. Because the force of the current was high, the friction was low, the length of the slide was long, and the time it took to reach the bottom was short, the power of the system was HUGE. And we definately felt it on some of these rides...

Overall, it was a REALLY fun day :)