Our family recently traveled to Walt Disney World. In anticipation of the experience we spent a day learning about the physics of roller coasters and understanding a bit more about what makes them work.
Goal For This Unit Study:
Learn and/or review this vocabulary
friction: A force caused by a rubbing motion between two objects.
gravity: A force that draws any two objects toward one another.
kinetic energy: The energy of an object in motion, which is directly related to its velocity and its mass.
potential energy: The energy stored by an object ready to be used.
Introduce Newton’s Laws of Motion
First Law: An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Second Law: Force is equal to the mass of an object times its acceleration. This means that heavier objects need a larger force to move them.
Third Law: For every force acting on an object, that object exerts an equal force in the opposite direction on the first object.
Music 🎵
I of course had to set the tone with this “Rollercoaster” Spotify Playlist.
Spotify Playlist
Roller Coaster Physics Resources
Websites
I used the website How Do Roller Coasters Work by Wonderopolis to help guide our lesson.
Books
I read these books to the kids.
Super cute anthropomorphism of our key vocabulary words.
YouTube Videos
We watched these videos.
Hands On Fun
We finished up by building our own rollercoasters with this fun game I got from Amazon.
Real Life Application
Finally we went to Walt Disney World and rode on rollercoasters. The first one was Thunder Mountain Railroad. As the rollercoaster ascended the hill we asked the kids, “What type of energy do we have now?” POTENTIAL! Then as the rollercoaster descended, “What type of energy now?” KINETIC!
I loved how both kids observed the track and the mechanisms of the ride. They were able to appreciate it in a whole new way. Although Anika let me know that by learning about how it worked I did take some of the magic away. LOL. 🤣
Us on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train! A little too much kinetic energy for Anika on this one!
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Wow!!! This was very interesting! I loved how you facilitated opening up minds to the how and the why things work! With certainly that investigative skill won’t end with the children with thrilling roller coasters! The photos are priceless as well!
Congratulations on a fun filled family adventure!
Thank you!