Roller Coaster Assessment

Table of contents

1. The Assessment
   1. Assignment
   2. Proficiency Scale - Students can …
   3. Worksheet
2. Calculation Help
   1. Calculating Force - Example
      1. Summary
   2. Momentum, PE, and KE
3. Writeup Help

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The Assessment

Assignment

We are losing customers at our amusement park! Our advertising department has tasked your group to create a new roller coaster that will attract the masses. This roller coaster must be fast, flashy, and, most importantly, safe! One roller coaster idea will be selected from each class to be built at our amusement park. At the end of your testing you will need the final specifications of your roller coaster to present to the advertising department.

Criteria:

• Your roller coaster must have at least two of the following features
  • loop
  • hill
  • jump
  • spiral
  • corkscrew
• The marble must make it from the beginning hill to the cup at the end
• The group must use the entire length of the tube for the roller coaster
  • Hint, two pieces put together = total length in meters, measure this before you start!
• The roller coaster must be built in such a way that it can be taken apart at the end of class without damaging the foam tubing
  • ABSOLUTELY no cutting, tearing, or bending the tubing!}

Proficiency Scale - Students can …

Worksheet

General Worksheet

Mr. Hicks’ Worksheet

Calculation Help

You are asked to make 4 calculations; Force, Momentum, Potential Energy, and Kinetic Energy. This is tricky because we gave you nothing that measures these things directly, but we did provide you with all the tools you needed to get these values.

There is a basic strategy that helps you reason through what to do when asked to measure or calculate various quantities in science.

Now, let us use this flow chart to figure out how to calculate force.

Calculating Force - Example

1. Can we measure force directly? No.
2. What is the equation for force? \(\text{Force} = \text{mass}\times\text{acceleration}\)
3. Can we measure mass? Yes!!! We can measure mass with a scale, so we should do so, and store our data in a table.
4. Can we measure acceleration? Yes, and no… We can with the sonic sensor, but it can’t pick up the marble. So in practice no. Hence we must go down yet another step
5. What is the equation for acceleration? \(\text{acceleration} = \frac{\text{change in velocity}}{\text{change in time}}\)
6. Can we measure time? Yes!!! So now we know that we have to keep track of time somewhere.
7. Can we measure velocity? Yes, and no… For exactly the same logic as with acceleration, we cannot measure velocity directly, so, we go down into the equation.
8. What is the equation for velocity? \(\text{velocity} = \frac{\text{change in distance}}{\text{change in time}}\)
9. Can we measure time? Yep. Already on that.
10. Can we measure distance? YES, FINALLY!!! Meter sticks are great for measuring length.

Now we know that we need to keep track of both time and distance in order to calculate velocity, and then acceleration, and then force.

So, data tables we should have:

It may be that we only have one section in our roller coaster, and that would be the entire thing, or we could have multiple sections.

Summary

How did we get here?

1. We tried to measure force, and could not, so we looked the equation.
2. We could measure mass, so we did.
3. We can’t measure acceleration so we looked at the equation.
4. We could measure time,
5. But not velocity, so we had to look at its equation.
6. We could measure time,
7. AND we could measure distance!

Hence to get force we need mass, time, and distance.

Momentum, PE, and KE

Let us look at the equations for those.

\[\text{Momentum}=\text{mass}\times\text{velocity}\]

So we just need mass and velocity, got that already.

\[\text{Potential Energy}=\text{mass}\times\text{gravity}\times\text{height}\]

Now we need mass and height, gravity is a constant after all, so add height to our list.

And lastly,

\[\text{Kinetic Energy}=\frac{1}{2}\text{mass}\times\text{velocity}^2\]

And we already have mass, and velocity so we are golden.

Writeup Help

For this part the most important thing you can do is GRADE YOURSELF. Use the proficiency scale above and after you draft (meaning make a practice writeup), grade it against the proficiency scale to make sure you have included everything.