Gravity, Football Stadium Steps, a Slinky, and a New World Record

We tested seven different slinkies, each with different properties (length, width, and flexibility). The winner was a Liberty Imports 6" Jumbo Rainbow Coil Spring - a plastic slinky with a height and width of 6.2 inches. Guinness requires that the slinky be commercially available.

Our son Axel is at the age where everything needs to be the biggest, fastest, or most extreme version of itself. He'd recently discovered slinkies and knew I had attempted a world record before, so naturally he wanted to know the record for most stairs descended by a slinky. When we looked it up and saw the existing record was 30 stairs, it seemed beatable.

The real challenge wasn't the slinky - it was finding the right stairs that would work well with a good slinky - a lot of moving variables and the physics is quite interesting. You need a long, uninterrupted run with no landings and just the right height-to-depth ratio. Our first attempt was at an old dam, but the stairs were so wide the slinky couldn't clear a single step (Axel was devastated). Back to the drawing board. We were visiting my parents in Columbus and I drove past a local college with what looked like ideal bleachers (I never look at stairs the same way anymore). The stadium was locked for the summer, so I called the athletic director with what I'm sure was the strangest request of his week, and he very kindly arranged for staff to open it up for us that Wednesday. Once we were in, it took about two hours to get a successful full-length run. We nearly gave up early on because we were struggling to get any momentum, but once we pushed through that wall the long runs started coming.

I've always had a soft spot for them but hadn't played with one in years. Axel had one slinky before this adventure, which quickly became a tangled mess - so this was very early in his slinky career.