the.com/seesaw
physics class disguised as a playground duel, where weight is destiny and friends are leverage
means A long plank balanced at its center on which two people sit at opposite ends, rising and falling in turns as each pushes off the ground.
from A reduplication — the kind of rhyming sing-song doubling that English loves (zigzag, flip-flop, criss-cross). The favored explanation traces it to the rhythmic chant of sawyers working a two-man saw back and forth, the 'see-saw' of the blade matching the up-and-down of the play; whether the children's plank truly borrowed the sawyers' work-song or simply echoes the same swaying motion is hard to pin down, but the toy and the phrase both surface in English by around the 17th century.
- old name
- called a teeter-totter across much of America
- hidden math
- a working lever balancing torque around a fixed point
- power move
- the heavier kid controls everything from the bottom
- betrayal classic
- hopping off mid-air sends partners crashing down
- latin roots
- name echoes the rhythmic chant of sawyers cutting wood
seesaw bridge in amsterdam — functional bridge in de pijp neighborhood that tilts up and down with weight
seesaw at meiji shrine — historic playground equipment in tokyo where japanese children play daily