What's more fun than riding a roller coaster? Building a roller coaster! That's just what your middle school students will find out while simultaneously learning about g... ...more

What's more fun than riding a roller coaster? Building a roller coaster! That's just what your middle school students will find out while simultaneously learning about gravity, friction, potential and kinetic energy, g-forces and teamwork. In this engaging two-hour design challenge, student engineering teams create and build tabletop-sized model rollercoasters from simple materials—foam tubing, cups and tape. The activity involves creative brainstorming and design optimization, two key engineering concepts that may be new to your students, but they'll use again and again. Through this hands-on competition, in which a glass marble simulates a typical car, a wooden marble represents an empty car and a steel marble represents a full car, students see several key physics concepts demonstrated. A scoring rubric suggests points to award for creativity (height, 90/180/270-degree turns, loops and corkscrews) and performance (safe completion by three passenger/marble types). As a bonus, teaching this activity meets numerous NGSS (science) and ITEEA (technology) standards. ...less