Spoiler alert: group of fun-loving French folks build an animal-or-human-powered merry-go-round that spins fast enough to fling all takers into the lake (YouTube, embedded below). Actually, that’s basically it. The surprise is ruined, but you probably want to check out the video anyway, because it looks like a ton of fun.
Granted, you may not have a well-stocked metal shop or a team of oxen up by the lake wherever you live, but there are certainly details in the video that will survive in translation. Basically, the team took the axle off of a junked car, attached it to a pole in the middle of the lake, made a large wooden drive wheel, and wrapped an infinite length of rope around it.
[Charles] from [Mad Cow] wrote us that there was about a 10:1 ratio between the drive wheel and the arms of the people-flinger. So if the cattle were pulling at 3 km/h, the human angular velocity was a brisk 30 km/h! Then it’s just a matter of convincing a team of cows, or a team of soccer players (?), to put their backs into it.
The [Mad Cow] crew seems to have more than their fair share of engineering dangerous fun up at their summer hideaway: check out their human crossbow that we featured a few years back.
“…or a team of soccer players (?)…”
Judging from their kit I’m going to guess rugby players.
you’re right ! it’s the “Racing Club de Saint Cernin”, the local rugby club, in the heart of “pays de Salers” renown for it’s cheese and it’s meat
Hah! I was going to say “and its cows” and then I realized you had it covered…
LOL what possibly go wrong.
Some great “scenery” in that video ;-)
I’m sure my boys will try something like that when they are a bit older
THIS! Is why I come to hackaday!
I was expecting a Far Side™ cartoon.
Same here this is the kind of stuff I like to see.
Infinite length of rope?
Animal cruelty :'(
Oh, I don’t know. They landed in water.
Looks like there is some kind of mechanism that releases the handles when the pull rope runs out.
No, I’m mistaken. It looks like the rope for the handles just broke once or twice.
I think there’s an inbuilt safety feature where one passenger releasing its grip automatically releases the other too, to protect the machine from lopsided loading.
I think you were right the first time. Seems like there’s a mechanism that releases the second rider once the first lets go, most likely to save the bearing from being wrenched to bits by such a suddenly unbalanced spinning mass.
I dunno, that’d be complicated. I can’t see the video, but once one rider falls off, the energy from the oxen is only having to spin half the weight (approx), so perhaps a quick jerking increase in speed is what sends the other one falling off?
I thought they were both holding the same rope and once one lets go the other slides outwards. That may be just me applying what I would do but it is hard to be sure. It does appear as though they use people that are approximately the same size.
It looks like both handle ropes are attached to a middle rope with metal clips. The middle rope goes through some metal rings, looping around the middle ring. The loop around the middle ring provides some friction, but when one rider lets go, the other ride will pull on the middle rope outward until the opposite metal clip hits a ring, at which point it will stop abruptly, and the 2nd rider flies off.
The way I deal with the conversion when faced with the task is knowing 0-60mph in a car is the same as 0-100kph, then I can whittle it down in my head from there.
Why don’t you try and learn something instead of asking the rest of the world to revolve around you? Do you expect all writers on the internet to learn another system of measurement just to placate Americans who refuse to do the same?
Or gosh, even learn both.
UK isn’t metric. It’s a curious mix depending on what you are doing at the time.
And it’s not complicated !
I’ve always thought the French have a special talent for enjoying life. I’d love to build or ride one of these contraptions! I wonder how difficult it is for just one or two people to pull the rope.
Dunno ’bout 1 or 2 people. One electric winch oughtta do…
I… I may have read the last word in the headline wrong initially. I was *very* confused, both as to mechanism and intent.
Also: tangential velocity. Their radial velocity is zero until they fall off.
Angular velocity*
Fixed! Thanks.
The conversion is about 5/8. If you want better, why not look it up? Why convert into stupid units just for the one country that doesn’t teach it’s people metric? Well, two if you count Liberia. Although Commerce and Industry Minister Wilson Tarpeh has committed Liberia to joining the 20th Century soon.
If it were some obscure knowledge, it’s reasonable to ask for help. But to write the article just for you, because you can’t be arsed looking it up, is… well have you ever wondered why some people just don’t seem to like Americans? BTW it’s not because they hate freedom.
Le video est unavailable for some reason, so I can’t tell. But doesn’t it look like you’d end up flung into a tree and breaking your spine if you let go at the wrong time?
IT´s not THAT fast that you will fall into a tree. Maybe your´re confused with units :)
They do a few wide shots and the whole contraption is quite well into the body of water so to encroach on any trees would require some serious flinging.
When you have enough time with nothing else to do…
It´s in France: there is plenty of time, enough money, good wine, nice people, cheese, and a real democracy, with real freedom.
Just you. For the rest of the world (nope. The US isn’t the world, sorry) this has more meaning than any imperial unit :P
Completely incorrect. Every Imperial unit has a meaning in its own right. The metric system is just made up by people that build water park centrifuges from wood. I think that puts the facts in order OK.
Oh. Just to convert it to your weird units:
100km/h converts to 27.78 hertz per diopter :P
Hmm, I thought 1 Hz/dioptre was 1 m/s with a very small error.?
1 Hz/dpt is exactly 1m/s ;)
1 (1/s)/(1/m) :D
And ~28m/s are 100km/h
Too early for me. Missed the hour.:)
Is the stick used to beat the cows so they go?
Not “beat”, more, ‘gently encourage’. With the proviso that cows have thick skin so what is a tap on the shoulder for them is quite a thump for a human.
Does the conductor use his baton to beat members of the orchestra?
In my experience they do occasionally. Some conductors are quite… wired.
For you, it’s probably close enough to say 1 mph = 1 km/hour.
Someone nearby had the remnants of an old oldsmobile on a platform in the middle of a farm pond. The rear axle was turned vertical and an arm was mounted to the brake drum. They were purported to use it for water skiing. While it looked like redneck engineering it was rumored to be a thing in Switzerland.
Yup, Boy Howdy I’ll tell you whut, dang near every culture has rednecks with both the positive and negative connotations of the phrase. It’s like a gene that has propagated through all cultures. At the heart of being a Redneck is that you make your own solutions, you make your own fun and your real wealth is not found in a bank account.
I have met Chinese rednecks, African Rednecks, white and black Oztrallian rednecks, Canadian Rednecks, Swiss Rednecks, Korean Rednecks, Mexican Rednecks… I reckon it’s also true that the negative connotations of the label “Redneck” play out to in reality around the world. But I look for the subset of Rednecks that remind me of Red Green of Possum Lodge fame and try to hang out with them. That’s my tribe no matter the skin color. With us there is rarely a dull moment. In fact some moments run the fine line between exhilaration and “Oh Lord what have I done?” terror. That’s when ya know yer living right.
Kinda weird seeing this article just now. Just watched a video about the Underground Railroad and it showed some of the ways slaves were tortured when returned south. One way was a contraption like this, but obviously, they were tied to it and not able to let go. Resulting in separated shoulders, black outs, fractured vertebra, even death. Stark contrast to this post!
I came here to pedantly write:
I only saw steers, not cows, powering the winch.
B^)