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This roller coaster project was focused on helping us understand the energy transfers throughout a circuit. A roller coaster dose a very good job at transferring energies from Potential to Kinetic and even to thermal and spring energies.
The goal of the project was to create a physical roller coaster, studying the energies at various points along the coaster. My group decided to do a rather complicated roller coaster featuring a ramp into a jump, followed by a spring that shoots the car into another ramp, that has a loop de loop at the bottom.
The reliability of our coaster was questionable, most likely coming in with a low safety score. But it had creative components that made it a fun challenge to get working and calculate energies off of.
This is our total energies graph throughout the whole entire track. At each data point there is a change in energies somewhere. But from start to finish there is no change in the total energy. Since the car is traveling down a roller coaster, the gravitational potential energy is constantly decreasing, expect for when the car jumps upwards as seen at 3m. The thermal energy is was it at fault for the missing energy and throughout the roller coaster collects as most likely heat. The Kinetic energy of the car stays relatively low throughout the whole track, but dose increase on the downhill ramps and decreases on the up hills. This is simply due to the acceleration due to gravity and the traspher of potential/spring to kinetic.
Point 1: Was a the top of the first ramp. At this point the car was not moving and thus has no kinetic energy, the car was at the top of the ramp meaning all of its energy was in the form of potential energy.
Point 2: This was at the top of the ramp, the car was traveling quite fast as it was about to fly through the air. some of the Potential energy was converted into Kinetic energy, but the car is still in the higher part of the track.
Point 3: Since the car was in the air travel up to this point it, it has lost some Kinetic energy and gained some potential energy.
Point 4: At this point a large amount of the original potential energy is gone. It is now been transferred into Kinetic energy and Thermal energy.
Point 5: The car has now lost all of its Kinetic energy as it changed direction, but it is now in direct contact with a spring, that spring will help the car start moving again.
Point 6: As the car exists the spring and returns on its way through the roller coaster, it gains Kinetic energy and starts rolling down the track.
Point 7: This is the last stop the car makes before ending its journey. at the top of the loop de loop the potential energy is slightly higher than the kinetic energy, at this point though almost all of the energy has been taken by thermal energy. This is due to the large amount of friction found on the hot wheel track-hot wheels car interaction.
Physics concepts:
Physics concepts:
Velocity: How fast something is moving in a certain direction.
Acceleration: How quickly something speeds up, slows down, or changes direction.
Free fall: When something falls only because of gravity, without any other forces pushing or pulling on it.
Forces and Newton’s Laws: Forces are pushes or pulls that make things move. Newton's Laws are rules that explain how these forces work.
Friction: The force that makes it hard for things to slide past each other when they're touching.
Air resistance: The force of air pushing against something that's moving through it, like wind resistance.
Tension: The tightness in something like a rope or string when it's pulled on from both ends.
Momentum: How hard it is to stop something that's moving. It depends on how heavy it is and how fast it's going.
Collision: When things bump into each other, either sticking together or bouncing apart.
Energy: The ability of something to do work or make things change. It comes in different forms like motion, heat, or light.
Springs: Elastic things that can stretch or squash, then bounce back to their original shape. They're often used to store and release energy.
Conclusion:
The roller coaster project was a very enjoyable project. Possibly one of my favorites for the ap physics class. Throughout the whole entire design/build process. My group and I collaborated amazingly. Each one of us would take the opinions of another seriously, and would pivot there process to account for it. Our roller coaster its self featured a track to track jump. This design was incredibly hard to get right, admittedly we never got it 100% correct. But throughout the whole entire process the group was supportive and helpful of each other. I also had a lot of fun completing this project. I think it helped me bond with the people in my group and learn how to work with different types of people. I feel that throughout this project my character grew to accommodated this new style of working. I felt as if my group was all on the same page and it was a good feeling. I feel as if in this project we could have understood the problem we were trying to solve and think a little more about the problem. I'm referring to the Funnel we created to catch the Hot wheels as it jumped from track to track. The funnel, although seeming like a good idea, was flawed in many ways. It had a hard time receiving the Hot wheels 100% of the time and more often than not, failed. By the end of the project we were left with no time to fix it and hoped it would work, earlier in the design process we should have spend a little more time designing and editing this funnel to make it more Hot wheels friendly and reliable. Having a flatter more rigid surface would have allowed it to be more predictable than the paper folder we used. Personally I noticed the harsh reality of this paper funnel that we might run into later in the project but I decided to go with the flow and not say anything. Looking back on that I should have said my peace and looked for a better option, I feel I could have been a better communicator.
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