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Figure of 8 Stairs
Instead of configuring a stairwell as a space-saving spiral, waste a bit to improve on this, as suggested. The main benefit is you'd be able to run up 20 storeys without getting dizzy. | |
When my brother was young, one of the ways he tried keeping fit was running up the stairs instead of using the lifts.
I used to sort-of follow suit when I visited, by attempting the ascent at a fast walk, and I found I was quite unpleasantly dizzy after 5 floors or so. After that, it took a bit of
self-discipline not to bail out and ride the rest of the way. (And the passage up top was not enclosed, so the last little walk from stair head to front door had a vertiginous aspect - most unconfirming and detabulated).
Now if stairs ran in figures of eight, that wouldn't happen. Upon reaching your floor (at your own gait and speed) you would be as stable as that priest mate of yours is, walking a straight line and so on for the officers at the roadblock.
As soon as people started to realise the stairs no longer make you dizzy, they'd start incorporating a few flights into their ascents to their clouds, and some might even be crazy enough to just run the whole lot. (My brother said doing it every day up that spiral never habituated him; his head was always spinning like a top when he got to his floor.)
... and now imagine a Skywalk up on floor 15, as well.
You could have a marathon in a downtown like that.
Figure-8 Slide
Figure-8_20Slide
An older Idea here, somewhat related. [Vernon, Apr 19 2014]
[link]
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I like it. Some gifted architect somewhere in the world
must have designed this as a one-off, but that's not good
enough. I'd like to see them everywhere. There are only
one or two buildings around here that are taller than my
house/business (never thought of that until now), but I plan
to start bothering their owners about remodeling the
stairwells this very afternoon. |
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Your district could become a great figure-8 stair manufacturing center. |
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If you let your neighbour move his house onto your roof, you could share the heating bill, and the garden patch that opened up where his house once was. Even rural communities would have skyward-reaching living quarters in a world conforming to my obsessions. Rural sprawl would just be more organic, that's all. Put the occasional extra tree in the space saved. Put some of the money saved by the shorter cables into building a decent cricket pitch. (You'd have to bring in Indian immigrants to help you learn how to use it, but if the only other benefit they brought was briyani, that'd be worth it.) |
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//Figure of 8 Stairs// They have these in the
Volterra building in Cambridge. |
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They had to have them somewhere, I suppose. Only figure-8 thing google took me to was a track - which is really the exact same thing in 2D if you go by what I would consider the main benefit to be. |
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If you ascend a spiral staircase at a constant angular speed there should be no dizziness incurred; only changes in angular moment exert dizz. Presumably the real issue here is in the corners. |
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My solution for marathons on stairs would be banked turns. Double helix of course. |
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Or in fact - why coil the stairs at all? Run them at the most gradual curvature possible, right around the circumference of the building. |
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Now that I have seen a few times, mostly in ancient
buildings but also in some avanté-snob structures. The
steps
are always either too wide or too short. When I have to
take two-and-a-half strides to ascend four inches while
trying to follow directions that were not given in clear
American, it's easier to spot the design flaw than the
world-famous thingamabob of whatever that I probably
came to see. |
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//Presumably the real issue here is in the corners. // |
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I'm not so sure about the corners being the real issue, but my basis is mainly empirical, and based on a small data set, so that's a guess. Considering the principles, I'm guessing that the impossibility of moving at constant velocity in a circle without accelerating might cause the dizziness, but all I really know for sure is that going in circles makes me dizzy. |
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I like the idea of the straight stairway. Of course my version would use it to link all the buildings in a block together at least at one point on each. |
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And when you got to the street canyon, your stair would bridge it, and continue its ascent on the other side. You could have lots of parallel stairs making multiple blocks into 3D living spaces suitable for a sci-fi future. |
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//Volterra building in Cambridge// So I throw that
into Google. Nothing. Flat out nothing. So that
leaves me wondering - is Mr. Buchanan fibbing to us,
or is he exceeding spelling limitations, or do I have
to turn off Safe Search to see it? |
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//If you ascend a spiral staircase at a constant
angular speed there should be no dizziness
incurred; only changes in angular moment exert
dizz.// |
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I think that's wrong. Balance is controlled in part
by the semicircular canals of the ear, which
contain a fluid. When you turn, the fluid stays
still and exerts a drag on tiny hairs in the canals,
which sense the drag and tell you that you're
turning. But if you keep turning, the fluid starts
to turn too, so that you lose the sensation of
turning. Then, when you stop, the fluid continues
to move and induces an illusory sense of turning
in the opposite direction. |
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So, constant rotation will cause dizziness. |
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(Caveat - I have never completely believed that
the fluid in the narrow canals takes so long to
either start or stop moving. I suspect that
neurological accommodation is a major factor,
much as staring at a bright object will leave an
after image of a dark object. But the same
argument applies - it's the duration of the
rotation, rather than the acceleration, that causes
the dizziness.) |
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//when you stop// i.e. change your angular momentum. When you start, too. |
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////when you stop// i.e. change your angular
momentum. When you start, too.// |
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No, that's not quite right. |
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If you are standing still, and then turn your head
(or whole body) to the left or right, there is no
dizziness: your semicircular canals correctly sense
the rotation, which tallies with what your eyes,
proprioceptors etc are telling you. |
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It's only prolonged rotation that upsets things,
because your semicircular canals stop sending the
signal after a while, and therefore there's a
mismatch between what you see and what your
balance organ is telling you. |
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Then, when you stop rotating, your semicircular
canals tell you that you're turning in the opposite
direction, which again is a mismatch with what
your eyes tell you. |
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In other words, it's not angular acceleration that
causes the problem (that's what your balance
system has evolved to deal with). It's prolonged
rotation, followed by a stop. |
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If you want an example, turn your head left and
right for thirty seconds, and you won't feel
particularly dizzy. Now turn around on a swivel
chair in the same direction for thirty seconds. |
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