The Water Front Lifts Its Head?! The Physics of Aquatopia and Mermaid Lagoon (Disney Physics)
Hi, I’m Ken Kuwako, a science trainer. Every day is an experiment.
Did you know that DisneySea is full of hidden parabolas, the same ones you met in math class? The smooth curves that water traces through the air are physics in action. On my last trip to DisneySea, I spotted some beautiful parabolas in a few different places, so I’m sharing them here as “Disneyland Physics.”
What’s a parabola?
Throw a ball at an angle and it flies in an arcing curve. That curve is a parabola, and it exists because Earth’s gravity keeps pulling objects downward the whole time they’re in the air.
In math, a parabola shows up as the graph of a quadratic function. In other words, the path of a thrown ball or a stream of water is a math equation you can actually see. In physics, there are two basic ways to launch something:
・Horizontal projection: throwing something straight out sideways
・Projectile motion at an angle: throwing something diagonally upward
In both cases, as long as air resistance is small, the path is a parabola.
Spot #1: The water at Aquatopia
First up is the attraction Aquatopia. I didn’t ride it this time and filmed it from the outside instead. You can watch the water arc along a perfect parabola, steering clear of the boats floating through the attraction.
Where the water lands depends on how fast and at what angle it shoots out. Get the speed and angle just right, and the water sails past the boats without touching them. Physics calculations are hard at work behind the scenes of this ride.
Spot #2: The water play area at Mermaid Lagoon
Next is a play area for kids inside Mermaid Lagoon. Water spouts from all kinds of places, so you can see streams that follow paths close to horizontal projection and angled projectile motion.
Change the direction or force of the water, and the shape of the parabola changes with it. While kids chase the water and race around, a physics experiment is basically running right under their feet.
The mystery of the water that “lifts its head”
At both spots, I noticed that the far end of each stream breaks up into tiny droplets. Water has surface tension, which makes it want to stick together. As the stream travels, it gradually splits into lots of separate drops.
Looking even closer, I saw that the very front of the stream curled up a little, almost like it was lifting its head. Here’s my guess about what’s going on.
The water at the front is the first to hit the air, so air resistance slows it down a bit. The water behind it, though, is tucked into the front water’s slipstream and feels much less air resistance. So it catches up to the leader while flying along an almost ideal parabola. That’s my theory, anyway.
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