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John Godinez

Mrs. Zacharias

Physics A3

19 February 2019

Roller Coaster Lab

Background: The law of conservation of energy, the energy is conserved. Meaning that the

energy is transformed from one type to another but the total amount of energy will stay the same.

“​Energy is the ability to do work”​ ​and ​Work is the idea of moving something by using force

through out of a distance. Potential energy is the type of energy of position. And on a

rollercoaster it’s gravitational potential energy since its dealing with a height that it might reach.

Kinetic energy on a roller coaster is energy of velocity or speed as an object gains speed it gains

kinetic energy. Now you might be asking well what does this all have to do with roller coasters.

Now at the bottom of a roller coaster the object has no potential energy, the train. What most

roller coasters do is they supply energy to the system to bring it up which then gives it energy,

supplying it with a force which moves the object through a distance making work. As the roller

coaster moves throughout the track moving up and down hills at some point the roller coaster is

losing speed and gaining height basically throughout the entire process of conversions between

potential energy and kinetic energy.

Hypothesis: My hypothesis for this experiment is that the higher (2.5 * radius) we set the marble

on the foam noodle, higher than 27in the greater energy it’s going to have in order for it to make

it pass the loop which will be considered work.

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Materials: The Materials we used for this lab, was a single foam noodle with a marble and a

meter stick along with some tape, scissors.

Methods: For this lab we experimented with different measurements, dropping the marble from

different heights and seeing if it would successfully go around the loop, touching safety on the

other side. We first started out with our diameter which we first got 11 and for our radius 6. For

the marble drop we first decided to drop it from 20 inches, all 10 attempts failed. For our next try

we moved to a higher number which was 25 inches most attempts did succeed in making it

through the loop but there were some unsuccessful attempts as well. Our group started to see

some improvement so we decided to try 30 inches. All 10 attempts highly succeeded in

completing the loop and rolling safety.

There were some things that could of have been better that being our foam noodle since

for this lab we had to cut our noodle in half in order to make two. Our foam noodle wasn’t

precisely cut, making the end of the noodle short which made the marble wiggly and it would go

off the track. After experiencing this problem I’m assuming that the width on a roller coaster

track would all be equal or else rides will experience the same problem as us. Another thing I

was thinking it’s more of an idea of my own. But I was thinking what if we were to try multiple

marbles go all at the same time to see if it would be like a real roller coaster. For example a roller

coaster has many carts sort of like a train. Seeing if all the marbles would go around the loop

successfully. But for my hypothesis I was correct. I knew that it needed to be higher than 27

inches in order for the marble to have enough energy to make it pass the loop successfully.
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