Six Flags Great Adventure

Words: 806
Pages: 4

The problem for this challenge was to design and build a successful and safe roller coaster for Six Flags Great Adventure. This roller coaster also had to be a thrilling ride, which we would need to “sell” to the top engineers at the amusement park. We solved this problem by using the environment and resources that were provided to us in the location of the roller coaster. The environment was a window and window sill. We also had gotten ten small black bins and popsicle sticks. First, we stacked the bins in a pyramid formation, leaving a gap in between the third row from the bottom. In this gap, the roller coaster track went through it, and then went straight into a flip. From there, the coaster would go sideways on a side angle turn, and then …show more content…
The major relation to energy was the amounts of kinetic and potential energy throughout the coaster. While building, we needed to be sure that the marble would store enough potential energy--which would turn into kinetic energy--to come down the hill and make it over the first loop. From there, we still had to be sure that it had gained enough kinetic energy to make it across the sharp side-angle turn. At the end of the ride, the marble had an immense amount of energy, and we needed to slow the marble down by adding the soda bottle funnel. This allowed for it to smoothly land in the cup. At the top of our coaster, the marble was at its maximum potential energy while at the bottom it had maximum kinetic energy. This design challenge also related to speed and velocity. After calculating both the speed and the velocity, it is shown that the slower the time of the marble through the track, the slower it would go. This would mean that the steel marble had traveled the fastest, giving it to greatest speed of the three marbles. Opposingly, because the wood marble had the slowest time, it had the slowest speed. We had to use this information to make sure that the roller coaster would be able to function properly and safely with all three of the