Let's Get Physics-al
One of the few things that I have remembered about Physics, post-school, is that Speed equals Distance divided by Time. In other words, one can calculate one’s speed of travel by dividing the distance travelled by the time taken.

It’s almost glorious in its simplicity, isn’t it? Almost artistic, it’s even quite pleasant to say.

Speed equals Distance over Time.

Nice.

It was about 6 years later, at the age of 22, that I found that physics, unless one is a physicist, should be kept in the classroom. I was in rehearsals for The Real Inspector Hound, and we were on a lunch break. One of our props was a wheelchair, and our rehearsal room was the Orangery at Bretton Hall college. Bretton Hall, for the many of you that won’t know, is home to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Set in 100 acres of lush green, it is the perfect place to study an arts degree.

Anyway. We were messing about, pushing (well, shoving) each other down the hill in this wheelchair, seeing who could go the fastest.

It was then that I put forward the idea that we could measure the speed to come up with a clear winner. We estimated the distance to the end of the hill as 46m. We had a run up, much like a bobsleigh team, and a pretty straight one. This one was bulletproof. Thoughts of some kind of land-speed record filled our minds.

It was my turn to take the driver’s seat. I was last to step in to the breach and, being the lightest (oh, how cruel time changes things), I had a good chance of winning this one. Two of the guys took an arm each, two a handle each, and one shoved from the back. They really gave it the beans in the run-up, and launched me forwards.

After about 10m, I felt like I had surely passed through the sound barrier. The uneven ground beneath the wheels of the chair jolted my spine and I vowed there and then to make a wheelchair with suspension. At the 30m point, I was still accelerating, the wet grass providing little or no traction. At 40m, I’m showing no sign of stopping.

And then I saw the problem. An edge. An edge beyond which, I knew, lay a 5 foot drop. I slammed on the brakes, which did nothing but throw me in to a sideways slide. At the critical moment, a lump in the ground kicked the wheelchair just slightly in to the air, and I disappeared over the edge.

All was silence. The wheelchair lay a few feet from me, one wheel spinning forlornly as is demanded by convention. I lay sprawled on the ground, having executed the most graceful swan dive followed by face-plant this world has ever seen.

Physics, 1. DiT, 0.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 15:42, Reply)