The Swing Ride Model simulates a type of ride that can be found at many carnivals and amusement parks. Riders sit in chairs suspended from the ends of support cables. These supports rotate about an axis that can be tilted with respect to the vertical. Students use sliders to control the rotation rate, tilt, height of the supports from ground level, radius of circular motion, and length of the support cables. The controls are lagged to prevent unrealistic changes to the physical system.

Editor's Note: This model can be used to explore several concepts, including centripetal acceleration, equilibrium, spring energy, and central forces. How can the parameters be set to prevent serious injury to passengers? At what point could the circular motion become chaotic? Why do ride designs often call for hydraulic dampers to reduce the movement of the swings?   

The Swing Ride Model was created using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the jar file will run the program if Java is installed.

Please note that this resource requires at least version 1.5 of Java (JRE).