Math In Creating A Marble Roller Coaster

This activity gives students hands on experience with several mathematical and physical concepts in the development of a safe roller coaster.

Math in creating a marble roller coaster. Your marble must not fall off until it gets to the end of the track. This enables the marble to continue rolling when it comes to the smaller hills. Build your own marble roller coaster in this project and find out. Gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy.

I used this marble roller coaster activity to kick off our discussion of kinetic and potential energy in physical science. You ll be creating a homemade marble run and exploring what happens to the marble as you make changes to the track. Using only these materials and tape each group had to create a roller coaster that included one loop. The energy becomes kinetic energy when the marble rolls down the hill.

The mathematics of. Ngss k ps2 2 follow our science for kids pinterest board. Your marble must land in the cup at the end of the run. It s similar to how a roller coaster works this activity correlates with next generation science standards kindergarten.

You may tape your run to furniture. The roller coaster starts with an initial drop usually a very high hill so the coaster gains enough speed. Build a roller coaster with 2 hills and one loop. To keep roller coasters on the track make sure to do the math.

Let s begin by measuring the speed your marble can attain. Just like the cars on a real roller coaster the marble has potential energy when it is at the top of the hill. Rolling downhill later in this activity you will make roller coasters for marbles out of foam pipe insu lation. You ll need two lengths of pipe each about 1 8 meters long some tape a calculator a stopwatch and measuring.

Each group received one six foot piece of tubing and one marble.