At 1:57 p.m. on Friday, Suffolk Fire and Rescue was NOT called for an emergency at the Delusion ride on the midway at Suffolk Peanut Fest.

Classically speaking, that would not normally be front-page news, but it has some significance for your faithful correspondent, who was one of two people to take the first ride of the day on the newest heart-stopper touring with Dreamland Amusements, the company that provides the rides for the festival, which continues today and tomorrow on the grounds of Suffolk Executive Airport.

Journalists are not known for being adept with math or science, but this one found himself able to think of little else besides a formula learned many years ago under the tutelage of physics teacher Ralph Sampson (not the basketball player): F=m(a).

For the uninitiated, the formula is one of the most basic and important in physics. It describes the relationship between force, mass and acceleration. Specifically, it states that the force exerted by an object is a function of the object’s mass times its acceleration.

In the case of your rotund correspondent, the mass is somewhere north of 250 pounds.

In the case of Delusion, acceleration is the rate at which the ride plunges and spins those strapped into its seats toward and away from the earth.

Were the restraints designed for people like the skinny guy who buckled your pensive correspondent into his seat, or were they designed for people of the jumbo variety? The question burned into the consciousness of your frightened correspondent with every new twist of the machine.

Delusion is a $1.8-million study in the physics of fear. The one at Peanut Fest is one of only two in all the U.S. and came to Suffolk from a previous engagement in Oklahoma.

Its seats spin at one to seven revolutions per minute, and the turntable to which they’re attached spins independently at up to 12 RPM. That turntable is attached to a pylon that also spins.

With all that spinning, it’s surprising how clearly the ground rushed toward your petrified correspondent as he hurtled toward what seemed like certain doom.

Would the restraints hold up under the acceleration of the mass involved? And why would the only other rider — a sports reporter nearly 30 years your correspondent’s junior, and an employee one might expect to show some deference to his boss — be laughing at the obvious distress your hyperventilating correspondent was clearly experiencing?

To the first question, your relieved correspondent can heartily respond, “Yes, thank God!”

The answer to the second question remains a mystery.

The Peanut Fest thrills continue today from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Be sure to stop at the Suffolk News-Herald tent and share your Peanut Fest experience with the staff. This correspondent will be the one who looks glad to have survived his own brush with Delusion.