Energy on a Roller Coaster
Roller coaster for a physics lab.Copyright 2006 Vanderbilt University
Students learn about the conservation of energy and the impact of friction as they use a roller coaster track to collect position data and then calculate velocity and energy data. After the lab, students relate the conversion of potential and kinetic energy to the conversion of energy used in a hybrid car.
Engineers design new and more creative roller coasters all the time. In this activity, students act as engineers to measure the amount of the different types of energy. An engineering team designing a rollercoaster would need to make sure the cars never runs too fast (velocity) and relate that to how high the drops are using conversion of energy.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Apply their background knowledge to begin solving the challenge.
- Relate kinetic energy with gravitational potential energy.
- Hypothesize about experimental "error."