Making My Own Rolar Coaster! : Weekly Blog #16

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Summary  - 

This week in science, we were given the task to create a roller coaster that exemplifies all of Newton's Laws, as well as several elements of physics that we have been studying. We were able to do this using insulation tubes, dowels, and a marble as our cart. This includes concepts such as kinetic energy, potential energy, speed, acceleration, velocity, and force. How our roller coaster shows these elements is quite simple. When at the beginning of the first hill in the track, it has a great amount of potential energy. This is actually where the potential energy is the highest. When the marble has just finished a hill, the kinetic energy is the highest. Obviously, speed and acceleration are prevalent all throughout the course because that what keeps the marble going.

S&EP - Conducting Investigations

Through this roller coaster, our team decided to collect the different data point in which important events in our roller coaster occured. Some examples of this could be when the acceleration was the highest, which locations had the most potential energy, and which had the most kinetic energy. When trying to figure out what types of loops and hills worked with our track, we also chose to control the height and length of the loops and hills. We had to do this so we would know how the different elements in our track could work.

XCC - Cause and Effect

One great example of cause and effect in the roller coaster can be seen with the us deciding to put tape on the track. The cause of this was because the main problem we ran into was trying to make our marble come to a complete stop. We then decided to change the amount of tape we put in seperate parts of track. When putting down tape we saw that it had an effect of the amount of friction that the marble experienced, causing it to slow down. This shows cause and effect by having the tape exemplify an alternate way of making the marble come to a complete stop, and introducing a different twist on the friction present throughout the rest of the track. The cause of us doing it being because we couldn't get it to stop, and the effect being us putting on tape because it increased friction.