Dive Team Patch
Dive Team Patch
Life lost, lives saved: Story of Bronson Parsons
By Canda Harbaugh, The Western News Supplied with a paint-by-number style portrait of their son, glue and a tray of diverse “paints” – poppy seeds, coffee grounds, crushed wheat – Paul and Carol Parsons and their two daughters created Bronson Parsons’ smiling face using organic materials.
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If you're over 35, you may have grown up wondering whether the merry-go-round on the playground you went to was somehow too good to be true - fast, dizzy, and did not require a roll of dimes to operate. It turns out they were a little too good to be true. Children and centrifugal force without safety equipment or soft ground covering equaled plenty of ground rash and broken bones. As the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) drily states, "Merry-go-rounds are the most common rotating equipment found on public playgrounds." This article will discuss the unsafe characteristics of the old style playground merry-go-rounds, the safety issues today's playground designers must work with, and newer, safer styles of playground merry-go-rounds.
Faults of older merry-go-round designs
The fun and the danger of older merry-go-round designs can be summed up in two words: centrifugal force. As the merry-go-round rotates faster, the people riding on it grasp one of the handlebars to keep from being flung off. The faster it goes, the harder it is to hold on. The "holding on" is technically known as centripetal force, a force that keeps the person on the merry-go-round going in a circle rather than flying off. The centripetal force, f, required for an object (or person) with a mass, m, traveling in a circle of radius r at a constant velocity is contained in this simple equation:
f = mv2/r
Clearly, the larger the mass on the merry-go-round, and the faster the velocity, the greater the centripetal force - or holding on - required to remain on board. One way to overcome this would be to have a merry-go-round with a really big radius to make up for the huge influence of the velocity, but that would be impractical.
Once the centripetal force is broken, by the person letting go while the apparatus is still spinning, the person travels in a roughly straight line, right off the merry-go-round.
All of this is a fancy way of saying that the old-school playground merry-go-rounds were so much fun mostly because they were so dangerous. Sand was about the softest landing material one could hope for on the old playgrounds. These old pieces of equipment were very heavy, and were usually made of a wooden plank "floor" bolted onto a heavy, metal frame. It was hard to get them moving, but once you built up some momentum (which increases with mass), it was easy to keep it going.
Eventually, enough kids were hurt that parents and local governments began looking for alternatives to the old playground gear that bought indestructibility at the price of safety. Over the years, safety features became more important in the design of playgrounds and playground equipment.
Safety Guidelines for Newer Merry-Go-Rounds
The CPSC, in its Public Playground Safety Handbook, contains the following guidelines for merry-go-rounds.
1. Merry-go-rounds should not be used on playgrounds for toddlers
2. Maximum height of the sitting/standing surface should be no more than 14 inches above a protective ground surface for preschoolers, and 18 inches above a protective ground surface for kids age 5 to 12. And,
3. The rotating platform itself should be circular - disk shaped - with no holes
Newer Merry-Go-Round Designs
While today's playground merry-go-rounds are still based on the concept of a central, spinning platform, they now have safety features to comply with guidelines from the CPSC, local governments, and insurance companies. Here are a few newer, safer options.
1. Overhead rings that children grab onto and then spin, taking their feet off the ground
2. A spinning pole between two children who stand on a circular base and spin around while holding onto handles on the central pole.
3. The "teacup" design where children climb in, sit in a circle, and spin themselves by grabbing onto a center wheel
4. Multiple tricycle seats with handles attached to a center pole.
While your children may not get to experience the thrill of being flung off a spinning disk and sliding across a sand patch, you can be thankful that they're far less likely to experience the hazards like broken limbs that sometimes came with the old style playground merry-go-rounds.
AAA State of Play offers playground equipment manufactured to commercial standards including classic merry go rounds.
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