Sumit Dagar

On a drop this steep, there's a moment where nothing is holding you up. Your back comes off the slide and you're just falling, with the plastic somewhere underneath you. Beach Park in Brazil has two of these. One is about eight stories tall, and the big one, Insano, is 14 stories and advertised at 65 mph. It happens because of where you start. Sitting at the top, you're barely moving forward at all, so the second you tip over, your body wants to drop almost straight down. The slide curves toward vertical faster than you can keep up with it, so for a moment it's pulling away from you, and that's the feeling of your back peeling off the plastic. ProSlide, the company that built the smaller one, literally sells this kind of ride under the name FreeFALL. After that, gravity decides how fast you go. Drop 82 feet with zero friction and you'd hit around 50 mph. The park says that slide tops out around 37 mph, so the water and your skin eat about a quarter of your speed on the way down. Run the same math on Insano's 135 feet and the no-friction limit comes out to about 63 mph. Beach Park advertises 65, so if my math holds, they're saying you lose nothing at all. That's also why they make you cross your arms and ankles. You want everything tucked in for the second you're in the air. By the bottom it flips, and the curve where the slide flattens out presses you down into it hard. The caption on the video says it's one minute of panic for three seconds of adrenaline. Scientists have actually measured what that minute costs you. Back in 2006, a team at Emory put 32 people in a brain scanner and gave them electric shocks. Before each one, they were told how strong it would be and how long they'd have to wait for it. Then they got to pick. Nine of them, 28%, chose a stronger shock just so they wouldn't have to wait as long. For those nine, sitting there was worse than the extra pain. Their brain scans showed the dread living in the part of the pain system that handles attention. The people who hated waiting most were locked in on the foot that was about to get zapped. On the smaller slide there's no runway before the drop. You have to scoot yourself off the edge. Gregory Berns, who ran the study, said the way to take the edge off dread is to put your attention somewhere else. Tough to do when you're staring straight down at the spot your back is about to leave.