I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Isn't it weird how your legs totally forget how to walk when you come to an escalator that isn't working? You get there, and your eyes swim and boggle as you try and comprehend that the thing isn't working.
And then it's like you suddenly have big metal robot legs that you're just now learning to use for the first time, and you have to tell them how to do it. Okay lefty, you go first, now righty it's your turn.. And you have to concentrate really hard in order to just not fall over and kill yourself.
Am I the only one who has encountered this phenomenon, or is it a common thing? I wonder why it throws me so much. Science. Who gets it. Not I. Surprisingly, Science For Life never covered broken escalator science. This is what's wrong with our educational institutions.
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
14 comments:
I know the feeling. My hypotheses are:
(a) escalator steps are steeper than regular steps, and so work your muscles in an unusual way, which makes it feel harder on your legs;
(b) a force as yet unknown to science which emerges around escalators, making them simultaneously unusually prone to break-down and difficult to climb when broken down.
Interesting, interesting. You could well be right, though I'm unconvinced about standard step size. I'd need some stats. And a graph.
My idea is that peripharally you are seeing the opposite escalator, still moving, and that gives the impression your broken one is still moving.
I'd appreciate a scientist writing their thesis on this, just so it's cleared up for me.
Your brain gets tricked. Your brain knows that escalators move and you adjust your momentum accordingly so you don't fall over. But when the escalator doesn't move your brain still wants you to change your momentum, but you are trying to oppose it and then you just completely forget how to walk. I have the same problem and have spent much time analysing it.
There is also the problem that the height difference between the steps at the very bottom and top is less than normal, as those steps are already part way to disappearing back into the back of the escalator. I think the small steps to start off catch you unaware, becuase you're expecting them to be the same height as the ones the rest of the way up.
Can I share a related anecdote? (Thanks):
A few years ago I got off a train at Melbourne's main station. I was engrossed in some reading matter as I stepped on to the escalator, standing politely on the left hand side so that more energetic people could walk past me up the stairs. Perhaps 5 or 6 minutes later the sound of snickering pierced my readerly haze. Slowly it dawned on me that the escalator was not moving! There I was, standing stock still on the bottom step while people pushed politely past to clamber up the stairs while producing said snickering. So I would be delighted to find that escalators produced a force field, which in addition to making them difficult to climb, dulled the usually keen senses of their passengers....
I can't beat Jo's story but...
On random days the escalators at the train station near where I work get switched to reverse directions for some reason (so the up one goes down, and the down one goes up).
Creatures of habit that we are ... not quite sure how many times I've been caught out running to catch a train towards the (usually) up escalator and only at the very last second becoming aware that it's coming down that day.
Some gold here!
Goldy, I love that idea of shifting momentum. I think you are really onto something. When the steps are moving, you must instinctively move a different way, and when they suddenly aren't moving, your instinct gets thrown.
Maso-more gold. I think that's such a good point, that the steps at the top and bottom all vary in height. This is not an issue when they're moving, but when they're stopped your feet don't know what heights coming next. Good one!
Jo- Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo. That's a great story!5 or 6 minutes? Where were you expecting the escallator to lead? Fremantle? I would have loved to have seen that.
I know. It would be more creditable if I was reading Proust or some great work of history but I was actually reading mX. So it's embarrassing all round.
I think it was only a few weeks before that I was reading the mail while walking down my street and walked straight past a warning sign and two workmen into a large expanse of wet cement. The workmen were quite surprised.
Oh, that explains it. mX exudes a stupefying miasma.
I bet it was mX Talk. I regularly nearly miss my train stop because of mX Talk.
Stuart, a little known fact is that 'mX' actually stands for 'miasma (e)Xuder'
Aha! I'm teaching that to my students tomorrow.
Thanks, Stuart, I'll take that (or any) excuse! But when I told my mother about the incident, she said that having often seen me become entirely deaf to the world while reading the back of a cereal packet, she was not at all surprised. So basically, I need to avoid trying to multi-task if one of those tasks is reading.
Oops, that was me - logged in as husband. It happens again!!
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