So rollercoasters make sense to me. You just have to design a ride to move a cart with a standard weight/size. But how can they design a slide when people’s bodies are so varied? How do they account for people intentionally trying to go as fast as possible?
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It’s all math, and CAD. The people seem like they are heavy, but it’s all about the water. Water, in waterpark quantities is super heavy.
The Texas water park company Schlitterbahn uses the trial and error method for new ride development. In this case, error means decapitation.
As with all engineering, it’s a combination of experience, testing, physics, and math.
Water slides have been around for a long time. The first slides weren’t the huge ones you see today. Each time a new bigger slide is designed, the experience from the previous smaller slides will heavily inform the new design.
Physics and math can be used to do basic as well as complicated calculations. For example, you mention peoples bodies are so varied. But remember, from physics, that a bowling ball and a golf ball fall at the same rate under gravity. The same basic principles can be applied to the slide, to show that everyone will side at close to the same speed. And computers canuse math to do very complicated physics simulations.
Testing will be done once a slide is constructed (but before it is open to the public) to make sure different size people travel down it as the computers predicted.
Of course, 100% safety is never possible. Some people will get hurt, or even killed, on water slides. But not as many as get hurt and killed in their own shower at home.
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