The Crazy Thing About Slinkies

In today's video, we take a look at a toy that has entertained children for generations. The Slinkys. Nowadays we have many Slinkys. Slinkys are awesome if you were ever a kid, so you really hope you were. You've probably played with one. Of these, if they're a couple of really weird adults, you'll be playing with them today, that's us, yeah, this is the basic idea, we have tons of different types of slinkys, we're going to put them through a series of tests that we want to see. what type of stairs work best with these and what else we could do with them.

So sneaky that they were invented by Richard James, who was actually a marine engineer, and he and his wife introduced them to Gimbels department store in Philadelphia in the early 1940s. In fact, they were incredibly worried that they weren't going to take off, They paid a friend to play with the first one and in the first few hours they sold over 400 since then, they have been absolutely loved and these metal slinkys haven't changed at all. the only change is this little safety crimp at the end other than that, no

thing

has changed though, so these

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s are really fun.

Now I learned quite a few things while researching slinkys, namely the fact that veritasium has done a pretty interesting test. I'm going to try that Nate, you were telling me that throwing keys make a very specific and very iconic sound. That's true. What I've heard is that one of the Star Wars sound effects when firing a blaster is made by suspending a sneak and then hitting it. and having that sound wave traveling down when you're doing it to the side you don't hear much, you hear like a shaky sound but you don't hear Star Wars, yeah the sound is audible when you put your ear directly to the opening I'm going to put my microphone there so you can listen to it in such an uncivilized way.

This is a really fun experiment to see the movement of a wave through a solid, so I feel like we need to do some different tests. Unfortunately the looks at our location right now aren't really ideal for using slinkys especially since I called the full size slinkys and then Nate comes out with this yeah Nate where in the world is the internet? That makes sense, of course we're going to mess around doing this for a long time, so maybe we should try the stairs here, see how it goes and then, if we don't change locations, let's give them a good test.

I feel like maybe the stairs were narrower in the 1940s if these are the same size. That's just because each slinky seems to have a specific width, it's one of the most classic things to do with a slinky: you put it on the stairs and then you pull it really hard and it just walks down gloriously showing itself in many ways. Of the mediums, my favorite is Ace Ventura 2. When you throw a slinky at it, it has a certain distance that it travels and you can maybe exaggerate that distance a little bit, but it will have a natural radius, so if you have stairs. which are too wide obviously my stairs were several feet wide they won't slide so you need to have something like okay so we have stairs outside pick your champion oh boy I picked mine I'll try the standard metal , OK? how does this work ready, ready, what do you think he's going to win?

I don't think my slinky will go down more than one staircase. I think mine is going to fail horribly, but I think it will go further than yours. No, yes, this slinky. needs narrower stairs I think yours might need wider stairs, honestly the plastic slinkys don't work as well, but yeah, these stairs are, I would say, 4 inches too wide. We'll see Mark smart, smart, and slinky. He would introduce her to Arjun, bye. bye, bye, I'm so close, actually, so close to making it all the way, he leaned in a little, let's try again starting yours right in the middle, mine clearly didn't work on your mic anyway, yeah, I did es and slinky slinky slinky slinky oh no no Okay, I put it too far back, wait on your mark, get ready and Slinky really likes to do it.

Okay, night, you were going to try yours one more time. Yeah, I think I figured it out. Good. Well, they went down the stairs. Listen. do the technicality that worked but for some reason it's so satisfying just pushing it up it just likes going left Oh until I hit them I like it more clearly we have about 30 more slinky so we have a giant time for more slinky stairs Nate, thanks, so Nate, we found some stairs, we found some more stairs. I'm still not sure if these stairs are steep and narrow enough, but we can try a few different types of slinkys, too wide, we were worried about the fact that the stairs were too wide at the back, yes, wider, but this is it that I have.

I have over 50 slinkys and I think if I threw them they wouldn't slide, but they would do something. Hey, listen first, let's start with a regular. slinky test after that, let's get creative, come on, it worked perfectly, listen, we have some metal slinkys here somewhere, here we go, okay, on your mark, set the swing door once, link the sliding door like a slinky slinky. Everyone loves a slinky. That's exactly how this is. It's meant to go, I did it, hey, that's a sneaky way to go down the stairs. You're cheating, sir, you're a cheater. McKee Derson, I think I need to slide your pants off, we're both going to try something.

I think my methods can work. quick, he thinks he thinks his is here, go ahead, that's definitely not how slinkys work. I trust a bunch of Twinkies on 50 stairs, there are sneaky shrapnel fragments in there. Nate has the remains of one, some of our slinkys just didn't survive. What are you talking about those glorious two and a half steps, wait Pam if you keep it right on the edge here? Okay, okay, it's your turn, okay, the mega slinky, we named him that, well, no, we already have a big birthday. I don't know, okay, we need that sadness and disappointment.

This one, the elasticity is not quite tailored to the size, so it doesn't recompose very well as a result of it doesn't move, it just likes to lay flat instead of staying in a cylinder, so some of my Instagram friends and Snapchat didn't believe I was actually doing this, so now I have to clean it up. I think this is more of a joke than anything else. I wonder if my head fits in it. He takes the glasses. outside I'm going to put the glasses on the slinky here you go there you go that's great, that's great, that's good luck, there you go, if we look for other stairs, we should try it, okay, Nate, how long have we been 13, oh, we ?

I've driven around quite a bit, I think we discussed this, every slinky will have stairs that are the right width for them and this is the best we've found so far, we have just under a foot, but the thing is we have Come to a beautiful place and the only stairs that work are right next to our utility closet, that's how we can find it. Come on, come on, come on, come on, little buddy, you can do it. I have faith in you. Did you want something? Know? Do you still know? it's so good yeah that's like the side climb it's like a bummer define stairs for slinkys in 2019 oh autocorrect back to normal Richard James you have the right idea metal slinkys are the way to go follow, also who decided that stairs should be safe. and why did you kill the slinky game, did you kill it sir or madam, okay guys, so we will also try the experiment veritasium when you drop the slinky from a great height, the force of the spring itself is equal to the gravitational attraction, for so the bottom of the slinky will actually stay in place until the top reaches it and then the whole thing will fall out, so Nate will be up in the elevator.

Let's see how it works. Let's try a normal slinky and three. We have put together three well. two one, so that's actually cool guys, now we go from the direct, it seemed like the bottom stayed still until the top did. I didn't expect that to be so cool. three two one, okay, so for this one it's actually two. Slinkys that have been glued on but are plastic, we've never seen them made with plastic before so maybe someone has made it but we have it so we want to see if it works the same. Three, two, one, well, the bottom didn't move it.

It looked like the moving bottom didn't collapse into a perfect column, it didn't, but I thought the bottom stayed still until gravity caught up with the rest. I like it. You have one more up there with you. I do and This is a triple metal spring and I'm not sure if it's high enough or if I'm going to have to go even higher. You will definitely have to go up plus three two one. Wow, okay, same thing, it didn't work the same way. like a single slinky, however the bottom I don't think it moves from here it's not a great view.

I think it worked well. I also think we've definitely ruined this slinky in a lot of ways, like we stretched the top. doesn't work white one that did - here we go sneaky scarf guys that was a lot of fun and you know we always have more for you to see if you want to see our latest video click the box at the top and we'll see you next time we talk then