Thanks to Stephen Hawking, a great theoretical physicist and
author of A Brief History of Time, for inspiring the title of
this post. My knowledge of physics is less than rudimentary but
I do know that there are underlying principles at play each time
kids launch themselves over the precipice and into the descent.
We’re talking about the speed demons, acceleration and velocity
getting out of the gate with a little pull from gravity. Now in
more simplified terms that the mathematically disinclined like
myself can grab hold of, this is what we’re really saying when
we try and quantify the slide experience. It’s pretty much whee
to the power of three when screaming down the slide at whoosh
factor nine, or in unorthodox mathematical notation where ‘whee’
is the squeal of unbridled release and ‘whoosh’ is the air flow
required to have a full head of hair pluming up from the nape of
the neck. I’ve done some wondering about the antecedents of the
slide family. More specifically, I have tried to trace its
origins. No