Yesterday and today were 90° F days here so we decided to play in the water. The boys absolutely loved this slide and just had a blast! I must say though, that the pictures are a bit deceiving. You are supposed to run and slide head first. Eric would run up to the slide and then stop and flop down, with no momentum to make him slide to the end. So while the first picture was authentic action, the second one was posed.
That’s because Mommy was at work and no one else was around to take pictures of what was really going on. Since Eric was afraid to run and slide and Jesse is just too little to figure out what to do, I had to assist. As fast as they could jump up and run back to me, I was picking them up and throwing them down the slide. Each time they laughed, jumped up and ran back to the beginning, pausing only seconds at the towel to dry their faces. I was having fun too, seeing them enjoy it so much.
I not sure how many times we repeated this scenario, but we were out there for about 1 ½ hours and they were going non-stop so I am going to guess at least 30 times (and I think that is a conservative guess)…each! Let’s see, Eric weighs about 42 lbs and Jesse 25 lbs….hmm…18 ft of slide… That adds up to 2010 lbs of cumulative kid tossing and a total distance of 1080 ft.
We could use some physics and determine the kinetic friction coefficient for wet plastic, figure the actual amount of force applied and work performed (in Newtons)…Suffice it to say…I’m going to feel that tomorrow!
