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You are a secret agent from a competing amusement park. You task is to take a roller coaster and find out EVERYTHING you can about the roller coaster.
NEATNESS COUNTS!







PART 1 Most roller coasters wrap themselves in a circle. Draw a SCALE drawing of your roller coaster's first 5 peaks and dips if you could straighten it out. (You do not have to use the all the horizontal length of this graphing space -the numbers are just for reference.)

Label each hill's peak as a letter, A - E on your scale drawing. You do not have to use every letter. Note , the top of a loop counts as a hill peak.
Label each dip as a number, 1 - 5 on your scale drawing. You do not have to use every number. Note, each time the roller caster is at the bottom of the loop counts as a different dip.

PART 2 Calculate the height at each peak.
PEAKS
A B C D E
PART 3 Calculate the velocity at each letter and number.
PEAKS
A B
DIPS
1 2
PACES METERS
PART 4 How long is the length of the train of roller coaster cars.
How many cars make up the train?
How many rows of seats are in the train?

PART 5 Someone in your group needs to ride the roller coaster. Measure the g's at the first 4 dips and hill. Note which part of the car your are riding in at the time of the measurement.
DIP # g's Number of rows of seats from the font (middle is best)
1
2
PART 6 Measure the g's at the first 2 dips and the first 2 peaks after the initial hill from the back, middle and front of the train.
For each location indicate how many seats from the front your are riding.
Location BACK g's MIDDLE g's FRONT g's
A
B
1
2
PART 7 What is the average velocity for the entire ride?
PART 8 Excluding the time it takes for the roller coaster to travel up the first hill, Estimate the length of the remaining track, measure the time it take for the train to travel this length and calculate the average velocity for this section of track.
Length:
Time:
Average Velocity:

PART 9 Which roller coaster(s) in the park has a hill that is NOT parabolic?

Which hill(s) was/were not parabolic? (1ST, 2ND, 3RD, ETC)


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
"ROLLER COASTER PHYSICS" TABLE OF CONTENTS ... PHYSICS PAVILION TABLE OF CONTENTS
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