AiS Challenge Team Abstract

Team Number: 36

School Name: Las Cruces High School

Area of Science: Physics

Project Title: Roller Coaster Physics

 

 

Problem: When designing falls and rises of a roller coaster, what must be done to ensure safety of the passengers and still have speed, fun, and give the passengers on the roller coaster pleasure of the ride and the feeling of weightlessness.

Purpose: This Project is designed to benefit many people. It is important to the passengers of roller coasters, because they need to feel and be safe. Also, the roller coaster needs to have speed so people will ride it and the owners of the coaster will make money. We also hope to learn about the physics of roller coasters and how they work.

Plan of Action: The way we plan to go about doing this is to research physics and formulas related to roller coasters. We plan to design safe drops that will give riders the feeling of weightlessness. One way to do this is to shape the drop like the path of a ball thrown off the top of a hill. The shape at the bottom of the drop must be designed to "catch" the riders. This will change vertical motion to horizontal motion. We also plan to use C++ to design a program that will simulate falls and rises of a roller coaster and the outcome of the ride.

These are sites that have information relating to our topic:

Funderstanding.com
RCDB.com
Learning.org

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