Clown Town - The Clown Coaster 2/14

Image by Liliana Echeverria

Rollercoasters are very popular amusement park attractions, and for this project, we had to create our own. Using some insulation tubing, straws and tape to make a rollercoaster was difficult, but in the end, we created a coaster with a successful loop, turn and hill. After building the rollercoaster, we needed to use our knowledge of physics to find out the points of highest and lowest kinetic and potential energy and positive and negative acceleration.

The point of highest kinetic energy is where the marble is moving the fastest, which would be that the beginning of the rollercoaster at the drop. The point of lowest kinetic energy is at the very top of the rollercoaster because the marble hasn't been dropped yet. Potential energy would be the highest at the top of the ride before it starts, and it would be the lowest at the drop, where the marble is going the fastest to climb the loop. The acceleration is positive when the marble is travelling down the drop and down the hills. It is negative when the marble is going up the loop and up the hills.


Backward-Looking: What problems did you encounter while working on this piece? How did you solve them?

While we were building our rollercoaster, we had some issues with the marble falling off of the track at the turn. This was because the track was not at the correct angle, and the marble kept bumping against the edge of the support, which caused it to fall off. We troubleshooted this by holding the track in place until the marble was able to make it to the end. Then we used straws to hold the track up. Once the track was perfectly balanced, the marble was able to travel safely to the end.


Inward-Looking: How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?
I am really proud of this rollercoaster. I like that we were able to troubleshoot the track. I enjoyed decorating our rollercoaster and making it look like a real one.


Outward-Looking: If someone else were looking at the piece, what might they learn about who you are?

When people look at this piece ow work, they might learn that I am very creative and I love working with people who can help me get the job done. I like being able to trust people, and our rollercoaster reflects that. I'm a very creative person and that also shines through in the decorations that we put around the ride.


Forward-Looking: What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?
If I could redo this project, I owuld've spent more time on the math and calculations part and making sure that the whole ride was balanced before I actually started decorating. After all of the decorations were on, we had some trouble with the marble falling off of the track, and we had to pay more attention to that.

Rollercoaster 2/8

Link by GoodFreePhotos

Using our knowledge of physics, we are in the process of creating a working roller coaster that can carry a marble to the bottom without it falling off. The coaster must have at least one loop and at least one turn.

We needed to construct a working ride, but once it was finished, we needed to calculate different points, like the highest and lowest potential and kinetic energy and two forces that could potentially slow the marble down as it goes along the track.

Potential energy is energy that is not being used. It has the potential to become kinetic. Our roller coaster starts with a drop, so the potential energy is highest at the very top of the ride, which, on ours, is the highest point. This is because the marble hasn’t started moving yet, so it’s waiting to drop. The potential energy is the very lowest at the end of the ride, because the marble is moving quickly and has to be stopped at the end.

Kinetic energy is energy that comes from movement. The highest point of kinetic energy is at the end of the roller coaster, which is the lowest point of the ride. This is because the marble has been moving quickly the whole ride. Because of this, the place of lowest kinetic energy is at the very beginning of the ride, at the top of the drop. Kinetic energy comes from moving objects, and the marble isn’t moving when it’s up there.

Forces that can slow the marble down on the ride are friction and gravity. The marble must not fly off the end of the coaster; we have to slow it down or stop it somehow. Friction is the force that happens when two things rub past each other. When you rub your hands together on a cold day, that’s an example of friction. In this case, we used little pieces of tape and stuck them on the sides of the track. When the marble moved over them, the tape slowed it down. We placed the end of the track at the bottom of a hill, so the marble slows down when it rolls over the hill.


S&EP: Models

Before we began to construct our roller coaster, we had to see how we wanted to design it. We had a base, but the entire coaster had to fit on the base, so we made a paper model of the ride to see how we had to make the turns so that it would fit on the board. Our original idea was the have a one-meter drop with a loop, and then a turn going into a hill, finishing with another loop. We needed to incorporate cost into this, because we needed to ‘buy’ our supplies and we had a budget of $850.00. We didn’t have enough money or space on the board for that amount of track, so we made the drop, loop, turn, hill and another hill. At the bottom of the last hill, we turned the trak slightly to slow the marble down. We needed to use the paper model to see how well the ride would fit on the base.


XCC: Structure and Function

While constructing our ride, we needed to keep in mind the structure and function of our ride. When we tested the marble this morning, it kept falling off the track. We realized that the loop, which had been in perfect condition the day before, was slightly crooked. When we repaired it, the marble went down easily without falling off. The way the track was built affected the marble’s path. While building our final turn, the marble wouldn’t stay on the track because the track was slanted too far. We needed to make sure that the structure of the roller coaster was strong enough and in good condition, because the function of it wouldn’t work otherwise.

Energy 2/3

Let's listen to a song:

As we already know, it takes a force to move a stationary object. When a force moves something a distance, work is done. Work is measured in joules (J). In other words, force * distance = work when force = weight.

Energy is the ability to do work.

Kinetic energy is energy an object has due to motion. Moving objects have kinetic energy because they are moving. Potential energy is energy an object stores up or is not using. It has the potential to become kinetic.

Gravitational potential energy is potential energy due to an object’s position. Elastic potential energy is potential energy due to compression or expansion of an elastic object. Chemical potential energy is potential energy stored within the chemical bonds of an object.

As the song said, energy that is in motion is kinetic, and energy that is being stored or not used is potential. The example of the boulder waiting at the top of the mountain was gravitational potential energy because of its position on the mountain. Stretching the rubber band and holding it was an example of elastic potential energy because of the expansion of the elastic object. The energy that gasoline has stored up is an example of chemical potential energy.

The six general forms of energy are chemical, mechanical, thermal, electrical, light and nuclear.

Chemical energy is, as we already know, potential energy stored in chemicals, like gasoline. Mechanical energy is acquired or released by moving objects, like a thrown baseball or the turning blades of a windmill. Thermal energy is the motion of molecules and results from friction. Rubbing your hands to warm them up on a cold day is thermal energy.

Light energy is electromagnetic energy and different amounts of it to make different colors of light. Microwaves and lamps use light energy. Electrical energy is the moving of electrons. TVs and computers use electrical energy. Nuclear energy is energy stored in the nucleus of an atom.

Each of the six forms of energy can be converted to different forms and back again because energy is neither created nor destroyed.

An example of energy transformations: Thermal energy from boiling water was converted into mechanical energy when it was blown against wind turbine blades. Later, it was converted to electrical energy when the turbine blades spun, and was converted into light energy to light a lamp.

S&EP: SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data

This week, I used a Gizmo to explore roller coaster physics. I could change the height of the track, the weight of the car and the speed of the car to see what combinations would allow the car to break an egg at the end of the track. After changing the track’s height and the car’s weight and speed, I determined that the factors of speed and mass of the car seemed to determine if the car would break the egg. I constructed graphs to see the changes in the final speed after changing the heights of the track. The graphs helped me see the relationship between the heights of the track, the final speed and the height lost.



XCC: Cause and Effect

Changing factors like the speed and weight of the car can cause the car to break the egg or not. If the car was heavier, would it crack or break the egg even if the track wasn’t very high? If a tall track and a lighter were combined, would the egg break? I had to consider these things while doing the exercise because, when building a roller coaster, these factors will be important to think of to successfully be able to build a working coaster.