The Best Technique for Using a Playground Swing, According to Physicists

An international team of physicists has determined the ultimate method for using a playground swing, and I’m happy to report that you’ve probably done it right all your life.

In their article ” Initial Phase and Frequency Modulation of Playground Swings ” in Physical Review E, Chiaki Hirata and four other physicists from Japan and Australia compared various mathematical models and real swing data collected from volunteers to determine the most effective ones. swing method, which is as follows:

• At the beginning of the swing session, when you have less momentum, lean back completely as soon as the swing passes forward through the balance point (i.e., when the chains are in a vertical position).
• Once you really start to move, the optimal point to start leaning back will be earlier – at the highest point of the backswing, right before you start moving forward.

To be fair to Hirata et al., the goal of their study was not to determine the optimal performance of a playground swing, but to provide a more realistic model for the field of swing-based physics research (which I assure you is the real thing ) . The paper compared their own swing model with both the fixed frequency swing model and the square wave model and found that a combination of both produced results that were closer to actual swing results.

How do you really know how to swing?

If you’ve read the above and thought, “No shit. I’ve been rocking since second grade,” it can be helpful to think about how you learned to rock in the first place. The use of a playground swing (or “dynamic coupled oscillator” according to Science) is difficult to describe exactly, and how we can control the swing so easily is rather mysterious.

To paraphrase the article, choosing the right time to transfer weight during one swing cycle is relatively simple, but every time the swing goes back and forth, gaining momentum, the window gets shorter. Their example indicates a shift of 7 milliseconds per cycle – an extremely short amount of time to react – but as children, we somehow manage to quickly learn to swing without thinking about it.

The explanation proposed by scientists is that our bodies are tuned to the acting centrifugal forces, and when we swing, we slightly change our movement in response to the forces acting on us, without even realizing it. Imagine trying to accurately describe how to swing for someone who isn’t on the playground or has never seen one: “It’s like you lean back when you feel like it’s time to lean back…”

The paper proposes further research using virtual reality seesaws to eliminate variable physical feedback, arguing that it would be difficult for us to get high speed swings without momentum and other forces guiding our movements. I, for one, look forward to these new frontiers in experimental physics based on vibrations.