New model describes the actions that need to be taken by a person riding a swing

A team of physicists, mathematicians and psychologists from Jumonji University, Nagoya University and Hokkaido University, all in Japan, working with a colleague from Macquarie University, in Australia, has developed a model to describe the actions that need to be taken by a person riding a swing to optimize their ride.

In their study, reported in the journal Physical Review E, the group studied student volunteers using swings and analyzed prior models that have been developed to describe how swingers swing and developed new model that describes the process in real world terms.

As the researchers note, a person using a swing is part of a dynamic oscillator system with two main components—the swing and the human attempting to swing. They note also that prior researchers have developed two kinds of models to describe the swinging action mathematically, but both appear to suffer from deficiencies in real-world terms.

In this new effort, researchers attempted to improve upon both efforts by studying real-world swingers in action in a stepwise fashion. To that end, they enlisted the assistance of 10 college students, each of whom were fitted with marking devices and then rode swings with chains of various lengths the research team had set up in their lab. As the volunteers swung, the action was captured by video cameras. By analyzing the action in slow motion, the researchers were able to see what was happening at each step and to use that information to create a model.

The model shows that in order to initiate swinging, a person must lean their body backward, which propels the swing slightly forward. Following that, they need to lean back when the swing is at the bottom of the arc created by its movement. And then, as the swing grows longer, the person needs to lean back earlier. They also noted that as the swinger reached a certain height, they were faced with the option of maintaining their pace or continuing to push higher.

The researchers also noted that the adjustments made by the swingers appeared to be subconscious, as their minds appeared to be responding to the centrifugal force they were feeling.