GENERAL
A roller coaster is a balance between safety and sensation.
Naturally, the ride should be as safe as possible. After all, if the
people are injured riding the coaster then there would be fewer
repeat riders. Fewer repeat riders means a short life span for the
coaster. On the other hand, passengers ride a coaster for the death
defying thrill. The key to a successful coaster is to give the rider
the sensation of speed and acceleration. It all comes down to speed
control.
To achieve this, the hills, curves, dips, straight always, braking
systems and loops are not randomly designed. They follow some simple
rules of physics.
In order to understand what is going on, students must understand the
difference between velocity and acceleration.
VELOCITY
Velocity describes how quickly an object changes it
position. The higher the velocity the quicker an object travels
between 2 locations. Phrases like,...how fast..., how quickly, are
used to describe velocity. Often the word speed is substituted for
the word velocity in common usage. However, technically the two are
different. Velocity is actually speed with direction. For example, 60
mph, west, is a velocity. "West" is the direction and 60 mph is the
speed. The units of velocity are in the form of
ACCELERATION
Acceleration describes how quickly an object changes its
velocity. Phrases like, ...slow down..., ...speed up...,
...change speed... and change velocity... are used to describe
accelerations. If a student wants an easy way to determine if he is
visualizing acceleration or a constant velocity along a
straight line he only needs to ask himself one question, "Is
the object slowing down or speeding up?" If the answer is "Yes," then
it is accelerating. If the answer is "No" then it is moving with a
constant velocity. The units of acceleration are in the form of
If you use or find this page useful or have any
comments, please contact the author so maybe he'll do more.
Author: Tony Wayne
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