What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

There’s a surprisingly large amount of research into the physics of swing sets, partly because pendulums are really interesting physical systems and probably also because all physicists were once children.

a series of studies since the 1970s have analyzed exactly how pumping a swing works and what the most efficient way to do it is. What the physicists found, after half a century of research, was that children know exactly what they’re doing.