It's a question many a kid playing on a schoolyard or playground swing set will eventually ask themself: can you swing hard enough to make a full 360-degree circle over the bar?
Once the topic is brought up, expect a debate and at least one kid actually trying to do it. Most of these attempts predictably end in an Epic Fail, but sometimes someone — incredibly — pulls it off. How Is That Even Possible? Maybe only because the character is an unwise kid who did not know it was impossible.
Can also happen accidentally if someone pushes the swinger too hard, especially if the pusher has Super-Strength or other superhuman abilities.
Don't Try This at Home, as regular swings with chains/ropes are not made for 360-degree rotations, and as proven by the MythBusters, it's impossible for any person to perform under their own power. This is why:
As you swing, your body wants to fall straight down, and it picks up speed as it does, but the chain won't let you go straight down: it turns that downward motion into forward (or backward) motion. When you hit the lowest point of the swing, you have some forward momentum, which the chain then pulls into upward motion. When your momentum is exhausted, you fall back down, and the whole thing repeats. But once you get to the point where the chain is horizontal, you are at a theoretical maximum. If you go any higher, causing your horizontal distance to the bar, then you will fall straight down instead of following the arc of the circle. The chain will go slack, and you will experience free fall until the chain is taut again, causing you to either impact on the seat or the floor. The higher that this happens, the more energy is lost and the harder the impact.
It can, however, be done with swings that have rigid poles instead of chains. Just make sure you have a plan to slow down afterwards.
Examples:
- Crabgrass: In this comic, Kevin attempts to make the famous 360 swing. As it looks more and more likely he will make it, he tries to get other kids to watch him, but then he falls off the swing, slams into the bar, and lands flat on his face.
- Life in Hell: One strip features Bongo trying out various "children's science experiments", many of which are dangerous, one of them being "is it possible to go all the way around on a playground swing?".
- Care Bears: Big Wish Movie: Champ Bear is pushing Good Luck Bear on a swing, and Good Luck asks Champ to push harder. Grumpy rides by on an out-of-control rocket and pushes Good Luck so hard, he does several 360 spins and ends up tangled in the ropes on the top bar.
- In The Flintstones, a Funny Background Event has Bamm-Bamm pushing Pebbles on the swings, eventually using his Super-Strength to send her over the bar twice with a single push.
- MythBusters: In the 2005 season, the build team tested if a 360 swing on a regular schoolyard swing set is actually possible. They came to the conclusion that it's impossible for anyone under one's own power. With help of other pushers, it is possible, although highly difficult, and even then it's not a perfect circle. To do a full circle with the chain being straight, a person would need a rocket strapped to himself. A dummy was set up in such a manner; the rocket was able to propel it in a chain-straight 360° loop, but the setup would be too dangerous with a real person. They were more successful with a rigid-arm swing set, though even with such a swing it takes a lot of power and effort, as only a professional circus performer was able to do it.
- Old Master Q: In one short where Master Q is babysitting a kid in a playground, he gives the kid a hefty push that sends him spinning 360 degrees around the bar more than once... until the kid gets entangled horizontally on the swing's top bar. Cue Master Q's making an Oh, Crap! look.
- Dennis the Menace, the boss of The Park is Betty Sue Dubroski, a girl on a swing. Dennis has to attack Betty while dodging a mouse that scurries on the ground below and acorns that fall from the tree above. Betty performs a 360-degree swing as a method of attack, and once her health meter has been depleted, she performs several more before the chains break and she falls off.
- What Remains of Edith Finch: In the story of Calvin Finch, this is Played for Drama. Calvin is a child who wants to be an astronaut and dreams of defying gravity. When you play as him, he is characterized as a Fearless Fool who attempts this stunt on the swing atop a cliff near the house. It works, if you believe it. It also results in his death: the branch breaks and the swing launches him off the cliff. It's Death by Irony as he realizes his dream of flying.
- Battle for BFDI: "Why Would You Do This on a Swingset" uses these as the challenge for the episode. Each team has to spin around their swings fifty times in order to win. The contestants saw creative uses of these like using Black Hole's gravitational pull and using Fanny and Clock on the swing's fulcrums.
- Happy Tree Friends: In "Blast From the Past", Sniffles goes back in time to put up a net next to a swing set to prevent Giggles from getting blown off the swing and into a garbage truck. Instead, she bounces off the net and back onto the swing, makes several 360-degree spins around the bar, and ends up crushed by the chain.
- A test pilot for Bluey has Bandit pushing Bluey on a swing set. At one point he pushes her so hard she goes around the bar, and hits him in the back.
- Bump in the Night: In one episode Mr. Bumpy attempts to swing all the way around with the help of Squishington pushing him. He succeeds and gets turned inside out off-screen, which is what he wanted in order to retrieve the homework he had eaten.
- Nickelodeon Shorts and Interstitials: Inside Out Boy is about a kid who swung all the way around the swing set and got turned inside out as a result, making him a celebrity/superhero among kids.
- Recess: Swinger Girl dreams of one day achieving a full 360-degree swing. In the episode Swing on Thru to the Other Side, Spinelli believes she actually saw Swinger Girl achieve this, thinks she swung into another dimension when she doesn't come to school the next day, and promptly creates a cult based on her and attempts to do the swing herself. However, by the end of the episode, it's revealed Swinger Girl never made the swing; she leaped off at the last moment when her mother called her, and then went on vacation with her family.
- Robot Chicken: One sketch spoofing Nickelodeon's Inside-Out Boy (see above) has the character getting turned outside-in again. Not wanting to be normal, he then tries to pull the swing stunt again to change back but ends up going halfway over before gravity pulls him down and he hits his head on the metal, killing him instantly.
- The Simpsons:
- Discussed in "Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore." When Bart and Lisa are on the swings, Bart claims he once swung all the way around. Lisa doesn't believe him, and he then lies that he knows someone who did... who Lisa doesn't know because he lives in Russia.
- In "The Daughter Also Rises," Bart and Milhouse manage to achieve this (with Milhouse as the test subject) by taping a bunch of fireworks to the seat of the swing and lighting them.
- In "Maggie Simpson in "Rogue Not Quite One"", Milhouse, Ralph and a girl playing on the swings at Springfield Elementary end up doing multiple 360 swings after Maggie in the stroller rushes past them at hyperdrive speed. It causes them to get tied up on the bar.
