Roller Coaster Project Blog

Summary:
Have you ever been to amusement park?  Well have you ever wanted to bring the amusement park to you? The Roller Coaster Project did just that. We learned the key aspects of a rollercoaster like acceleration at the right times things that give thrill factors like hills, turns, and loops. It is all there when designing a roller coaster. Durning this project I was tested with the consistant changes in the build, working with the different aspects of the challenge and of course gravity and the physics behind an actual rollercoaster.
What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece? How did you solve them?:
Some problems we faced were that since our material was not as secure as something like metal it would tilt and mess up between days. We would have to rework and retape things a lot because it would dry of be knocked out of place. How we fixed this was just a lot of testing slight tweaks and reworks from what we already knew about a working roller coaster.
What does this piece reveal about you as a learner?:
This piece taught me I am good when I can see whats going on. I don't have to be the one to drop the marble but if I see the movement of it around our track I can learn to understand its patterns better that way rather than just in its number forms. Seeing consistent patterns with something you just learn the basics of how things function better.
In what ways did your work meet the standards for this assignment? In what ways did it not meet those standards? :
Our project had the basics. It had the complete Design Brief and of course this sutori. The build of the roller coaster was quite good as well but I think that we could have done better in some other departments. For example we should have labelled the build for the different aspects in it. We also could have worked harder on making the theme more clear and easier to detect. Overall I think we did quite well but if we had more time we could really push this to the next level.
One thing I would like to improve upon is ... :
I really wish we could have labelled the pieces of the coaster according to the questions. I really think I would feel more confident with the work if we had gotten this piece done. Also finishing the design of the the snake like build would have been nice too but was not as important to me.

Roller Coaster Build

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/files/2016/01/roller-coaster-tour-2-1024x697.jpg

Summary: Have you ever built a roller coaster? Chances are no but most of us have made our own race tracks or maybe roller coaster out of materials we have at home. Now a childhood pass time is connected to science and more specifically the science of motion. Roller Coaster are all powered by motion. It would be no fun it the carts never moved. What makes things move? Well lets start with some types of energy. Kinetic Energy is the energy of motion. You would think a roller coaster only needs Kinetic Energy but that is not the cause. Energy has to come from somewhere which is were we get Potential Energy. So when your cart is hanging  right over a great slope your cart has a lot of potential for energy if it is pushed forward. Potential Energy is converted into Kinetic Energy letting you have fun on a roller coaster.

S&EP: Using Models:
Since I can't make a life size rollercoaster to ride around in lets scale it down. What do you need to make a small roller coaster? Well you could use simple materials such a a marble as your cart, tubing, tape, and something like dowels and cardboard to help secure it. Now the tubing can't just be placed in any form if you have your track flat on the ground and then expect your marble to get over a giant hill it won't work. But why? Well for something to have any energy it must either have Kinetic Energy or Potential Energy. If the marble is just sitting on the track with no force being applied to it it will not move. This is due to Newtons law. An object in motion will stay in motion. An object not in motion will not move. You see to make your track work you need to create a situation where you keep speed until you want the marble to stop.

XCC: Structure and Function:
The first step to making your mini coaster work is by looking at examples of what has already been done. Roller coaster usually start of a position really high. This is to gain that Potential Energy that is all important. Then once you release your marble you will see if you created a hill it will speed down it. Now how do we continue this track of speed. This is where all the twist and turn come in. If you want the marble to keep its movement you can make something like a hill. It will go a bit slower on the way up but on the way up the amount of energy it takes to go us will be put back into going back down. You could use this new energy to make a loop or sharp turn. Slowly the marble will come to a stop once it has lost all the Kinetic Energy in it. This is ok all rides need to end at some point but depending on the structure of your build and how you lay it out and make sure you keep that kinetic energy going you can keep your coaster moving for a while

Potential Vs Kintetic

Summary: Kinetic Vs Potential. Which one of these images do you think is Kinetic? Which one is Potential. To figure this out you need so definitions. Kinetic Energy is the Energy of Motion. Kinetic Energy is things that move like the arrow flying through the air. Potential Energy is the Energy of Possible Energy. Would you believe me if I told you that an arrow that has not been released yet like in the left image also has energy. That arrow has the potential to have a lot of energy on release. That every don't just appear when you let go but it is stored up to be used while you pull back the string of the bow. Potential Energy is converted into Kinetic when you let go of the string or when motion is added.

S&EP:  Conducting Investigation:
 This week we used Gizmo to test Potential Energy. What was observed from the interactive is that the higher the ball or any object goes up on shelves or at different equal heights the ball or object will have a potential energy at about a perfect ratio. If on the first self the potential energy is 1 then you could expect that when you get to shelf 2 it will be 2 and so on a so forth. If you are working with even things since gravity is not going to suddenly change on Earth you can expect predictability.

XCC: Cause and Effect:
Newton basically invented this idea so it's unavoidable to avoid this great man when it comes to physics. Everyone knows the classic. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. To help you understand this better let me explain with the trampoline example. When you jump on a trampoline you always expect to be landed back up for every time you go down, but why? This comes from your understanding or this law of physics. You came down on the trampoline with lets say a bounce of 5 meters per second. Based on what Newton has proven you know that once you hit the trampoline the trampoline will take that force and use it to bounce you all the way back up. That's Cause and Effect baby!

Regrade on Speed Mastery Quest

Question 4:  The actual answer is 180 meters over the course of 15 minutes and the reason I had gotten it wrong originally is because when I was multiplying the first time I cared over the one but after using it forgot to cross it out making the answer 280 instead of 180.

Question 5: The actual answer is it takes 39 hours to get the Michigan but I stopped doing the problem mid way not dividing all the way down to 39.

Question 6: The actual answer is 1.17647059 and the reason I messed up originally is because I converted it to kilometers but I didn't do the last step and divide that number by one which gives us our answer.

Question 8: The actual answer is 875. I originally carried out the zeros out too long making my answer in the thousands instead of the hundreds. There was no reason to add a zero at the end.

Question 10: The actual answer is 0.5 m/s and the reason I got this wrong is because I divided time over distance instead of distance over time. I didn't ever work it out properly.

Question 12: The actual answer is the highest speed on the graph is the first one or distance 15 and time 20. I originally made a pretty terrible graph so I had no clue. The scale on my x axis was so large determining a proper answer was very difficult. It took just comparing the final velocity of all the points to see that the first one was the highest speed.

Acceleration

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170516170732-07-new-us-roller-coasters-2017-patriot-super-169.jpg

Summary: To understand acceleration we need to know some definitions and defining features. For example to really begin we must know about velocity. Velocity is distance over time. Velocity is also a vector which means it cares about the direction that the object is moving in. For acceleration we have velocity over time. When graphing it you must find the velocity of the object then you do a velocity over time. With acceleration we want to see how much it moved from the initial value lets say you started at zero then your initial value is zero then you subtract that by the final velocity it reaches. Then after that you must divide that number by how ever many seconds it took to get to the final value. If lets say you are doing this in units or cm or anything different then the value of the acceleration rate then you must divide it by that number for example if you need to turn it into meter instead of cm then you would divide by 100 because there are 100 cm in a meter. One you have that number you have your acceleration rate.

S&EP: Conducting Investigation: 

Over the course of our time understanding acceleration and deceleration we did a lab to be able to formalize our understanding these topics. When you see it in front of you it is easier to put numbers to actions. An obvious observation is whenever we put the car higher on the track it would move faster. It does time because the higher the slope the more of a gravitational pull it has on the car we used. We saw this in two senses. One where we stacked only a few books to create our track's slope. You can see the that car moved slower this time then when we had the higher slope of having it come off the side of our table. To understand deceleration we put it a little higher up but we didn't start counting until it hit the track the the floor were flush. You could notice at this time without gravity pulling on it as much the less and less it would reach each second.

XCC: Cause and Effect: 

Motion is all about cause and effect. You can basically assume if you are the throw a ball it would move and it would eventually hit the floor. We know this because we know that first of all throwing it will make it go into motion and gravity will pull it down. That is why things tend to not stay at a constant speed especially if they are not on an even terrain.  If you roll a wheel down a hill it will speed up on the slope and then  come to a stop but if you roll a wheel on even ground it will not be changed by gravity and will be at more of a consistent rate. In conclusion gravity causes a change in motion.

Speed

https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/08/hyper-drive-light-speed-fast-speeding-100678078-large.jpg

Summary: Speed. Mathematically speed is just distance over time but why? Well think about it from a logical standpoint. Think to produce any level of speed you must be moving. That's were the distance comes in. Distance is the coverage of space. Then we have time which of course we know as the units seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. Now that you know the basics let me show you have to do a Speed equation. For example Sam goes 6 feet in 2 seconds.With this information you can use the formula distance over time equal speed which would mean this equation would be something like 6 feet /2 seconds=3 f/s. So the speed of Sam is 3 feet per second.


S&EP: Using Models:
As you saw in my summary we use mathematics to determine things like speed. Yet we need to put all this math somewhere for it to be more understandable. That's when we meet the graph. With a speed graph we can track speed by the steepness of a slope that line will make. It on the y axis i distance so the line will go as far us as the distance is. Then as for the time it will move as far along the x axis depending on how long it takes to get to the destination. Together those two things make a readable graph that shows those two things.

XCC: Stability and Change:
When it comes to a constant speed its all about stability and an even ratio. For example with Sam's problem we could have the ratio of 3/1 or 6/2 or 12/4 or so on it can scale were the time and the distance stay at an even ratio. Then we can have change when something could accelerate. Acceleration is when there is change to the velocity in this cause speed on either the x or the y axis aka distance or time.That is when you will see a slope like image on a graph because the time and the distance don't line up.

Scalar and Vectors

http://ak2.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/10588442/thumb/1.jpg

Summary: Motion. What we know motion to be is an object moving from one place to another. Yet motion is not as simple as that once you look at how to track motion. For example lets say we have a person. To properly record this person movement we must first find a reference point. A reference point is a fixed point that never moves where you can observe motion from. So lets say out reference point is a tree in the middle of the field this person is standing in. Now the person is 5 feet away from the tree. This information would be considered a scalar. Scalars are just numbers that defines the magnitude of an object. Scalars unlike a Vector tells you nothing about what direction the person is headed in. To truly determine which position the person is we need a Vector quantity. With a vector quantity it will tell us the magnitude in this case 5 feet and it will tell us the direction that magnitude is directed in. So lets say the person is 5 feet north of the tree. Now we know if were to put this on a graph the person stands at point 5 feet in the northern direction which would be up on the y axis.

 S&EP: Using Mathematics:
 When determining the movement of something we can not expect them to always go in straight lines. We walk in lines of diagonal to get the shortest distance from point A to point B. There is actually a name for this which is displacement. Displacement is a Vector Quantity because you must with displacement say the direction . Yet since it is a diagonal we must use a little mathmatic to find our way. First off do you know rise over run. Let me explain. Rise is how high or how low the line went up. Then you must find the run which is how far that line is extended too. Then finally with both of those numbers you put the rise over run to get the slope aka our displacement!

http://mathandmultimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/slope-1.png

XCC: Stability and Change:
When an object changes its position relative to the reference point it can do it in one of two ways. It can do it a consistent rate of change. This means the velocity changes at an equal amount making it so it does not accelerate and still stays an even ratio. This will make a straight line slop it does not need to curve because everything is consistent and goes at the same rate the entire time it moves.Or it can change at a non consistent rate where the time and the speed begin to differ from one another.  This would be like you walking at one point and then running at another. This would create a curved slope. Changes effect our graph in many ways but this is how a change in velocity will change it.