Take your time from the birds, now you all know the words,

[austin_dern]

Mathematics blog posts from the past week. Busy week, thanks to the A To Z project.

• Reading the Comics, November 5, 2016: Surprisingly Few Halloween Costumes Edition
• The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Cantor’s Middle Third
• The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Distribution (statistics)
• The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z: Ergodic
• Reading the Comics, November 12, 2016: Frazz and Monkeys Edition

Some more of Indiana Beach. Getting near the end of the day.

Tig'rr Coaster facing its worst possible problem: it stalls out on the hill. Didn't have enough weight in the car to overcome friction losses which is how it got stuck at the top of the (minor, final) hill. An engineer is climbing the ladder and getting onto the walkdown ramp to push the thing forward.

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And off we go! There's somebody at the amusement park with the job of going up and giving a good sustained shove to stuck roller coasters and doesn't that feel like a better use of life than whatever your job is? Yeah.

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The Fascination Parlor, albeit with only four people playing. This is when we popped in again in the evening, after we'd spent our time playing. The game is more exciting the more people playing at once but even with just a few plaers it's a compelling Bingo-like ball-rolling game. bunny_hugger is on the far right looking over the counter and considering how to spend our tickets.

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The Fascination Parlor's video monitor. I'm not sure what all the information here signifies --- well, I guess 'winner' and 'coupons' explain themselves --- but it's fascinating and doesn't everybody love finding hardware twenty years past its time still being useful as designed? Sure we do. Yes, I notice the sign on the wall there.

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Boardwalk Shops, 'Gifts From Here and There', in the twilight glow. Photo taken from underneath the Hoosier Hurricane roller coaster because so much of the park is underneath other stuff.

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Trivia: Benjamin Edwards's 1826 attempt at declaring an independent Republic of Fredonia in land near Nacogdoches, Texas, lasted about six weeks before Mexican forces crushed it. Source: America's Wars, Alan Axelrod.

Currently Reading: A Great And Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving, Godfrey Hodgson.

Comments

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

At least you didn't didn't stall at the top of an upside-down loop ;D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Aw, well, stalling like that would take something truly astounding. Would be quite the story if it happened.

bunny_hugger noticed what I failed to in the roller coaster pictures. Do you spot this sort of zig-zag line on the left edge of the track? It's more prominent in the second picture. That's an anti-rollback device. It's a little sawtooth track that makes it easy for the roller coaster to move forward and blocks it from rolling back. Roller coaster designers put that in where they expect rolling backwards to be a plausible problem.

So it's not so remarkable that the car got stopped going uphill and unable to move. It didn't have the momentum to crest the hill, but that anti-rollback device kept it from rolling backwards once it did putter to a stop. And made it easier to get the car going again, since the park guy didn't have to push all the way up the hill. Just up one notch at a time until it was at the top.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

yes, t'would be quite toony :D

Ah yesh... I think that's why you hear the clickety clack when going up da track ... *waggle* ! ... Tho kinda surprised at the low-tech 'one guy has to push that' solution :D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the part that makes the clickety-clack noise while you're going up the hill. ... And it is also a bit wild that there's this guy with the job of pushing the car up that last bit, but it's the least absurd thing to do with it, I suppose.