Today was our third day working on rollercoasters, inspired by Phineas and Ferb and based on this Physics of Roller Coaster lesson plan.We started by watching this short video from How Stuff Works on how a roller coaster works. The kids answered some questions after the video using the terms they learned last time.
Q: Where will you find the greatest amount of potential energy?
At the top of the first hill.
Q: Where will you find the greatest amount of kinetic energy?
At the bottom of the first hill.
Q: Will the roller coaster store anymore potential energy during the ride? If so, where?
Yes, on the smaller hill and on the loop as it goes up.
Next the kids learned two new vocabulary terms: mass and momentum. Then it was on to the
challenge for the day. They were given the same supplies as last week: foam pipe insulation tubes
cut in half, masking tape and marbles.
The Challenge: Create an old fashioned roller coaster that relies solely on the force of
gravity to move the cars.
The Rules: The marble must complete the course while staying on the track. No human force may be used to get the marble started on the track. The track needs to have one complete vertical loop.
Here are the kids working together to come up with the best design for their roller coaster.
And the winner is:
After they had a working design it was time for a little math and learning how to calculate the speed (or velocity) of their rollercoaster. First the kids had to measure the length of their track in centimeters. They did this by first running the length of the track with string, then measuring the string.
Then they ran three trials, measuring the run time of the marble in seconds.
Next they filled out this worksheet to find the average velocity of their track.
They also converted the measurements to find out how many miles per hour their marble was traveling on their rollercoaster. Their marble was going 20.8 mph! On Friday we will finish up our roller coaster study by making a new coaster with multiple loops and then letting the kids go crazy- using their imaginations and creating a model of their own invention-
the 2G2R Roller Coaster.
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