> Roller Coaster Project Report

November 20, 2008

Bailey Hood & Chase Moore

The goal of this project was to design a roller coaster with a given set of constraints that will deliver a cart
or ball from start to finish in a time of fifteen seconds. After developing an initial design, we used many
trial and error runs to check the progress of our work after making any necessary adjustments. In the end,
we successfully designed a model roller coaster that met all the requirements. Although we were
successful, we learned that we would make several changes if we had to do the project again.
Introduction

The purpose of this project was to build a model roller coaster that would transport a cart or ball
from start to finish in a designated time of fifteen seconds. The roller coaster must fit in a .5m x
.5m x .5m box when folded up. The budget limit for our project was forty dollars.

Design Process

In our first meeting, we discussed many ideas before deciding on the final design of our project.
We knew that we wanted to use rubber tubing as our track, a steel ball as our cart, and that we
had to build the roller coaster within a .5m x .5m x .5m box. The only problem was getting these
ideas to work with these constraints and still meeting the time requirement. After testing, we
quickly realized we had to adjust the height of the tubing in order to maximize efficiency with
time, and we did so accordingly.

Device

Figure 1. Initial Design Sketch Figure 2. Final Project Design.

Table 1. Cost of Materials

Materials Cost
3 sheets ½ x ½ meter pegboard $ 10
1 sheet ½ x ½ meter plywood $3
6 feet rubber tubing $8
Twine $1
Funnel $3
steel slingshot ball Free
Washers Free
With our roller coaster, the ball starts from rest at the top of the box, about .6 meters above our
datum. Once released, the ball accelerates due to gravity down the first tube, hits the wall, and
falls through a small whole into the second layer of the tubing. The ball then continues its path
down and around the second curve at a very slow speed, but speeds up right before it drops into
the funnel. The ball will then spin around the funnel for a short amount of time, drop down into a
new tube, and continues its path around another curve at a very slow speed. Once the ball
reaches the end of the clear rubber tubing, it goes into a smaller black tubing that will slow the
ball down and bring it back around to the front of the box, ending the run of the roller coaster
with almost no kinetic energy left.

The energy source that powers our roller coaster is gravitational potential energy. It is the
conversion of gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy that makes the roller coaster speed
up and continue its path down through the tubing.
1
𝑚𝑔ℎ = 2 𝑚𝑣 2 Eq. 1.1

𝑚
𝑃𝐺𝐸 = . 012 𝑘𝑔 ∗ 9.81 ∗ . 55 𝑚 = .02 𝐽 Eq. 1.2
𝑠2

Results

Our first testing trials revealed that we had several problems in the design of our roller coaster.
We realized that we needed to adjust the height of our tubing in order to meet the fifteen second
time requirement and that our ball was too large. After making the necessary adjustments and
trying again, we finally succeeded in developing a consistent model roller coaster that would
deliver our cart from start to finish in fifteen seconds.

Conclusions

Although we were successful in the end, we ran into several problems designing our roller
coaster. Our main problem was trying to adjust the path of our roller coaster to meet the fifteen
second time requirement. We learned that the choice of materials and a solid pre-construction
plan is a crucial factor in your success of building a model roller coaster. The shaping of our
tubular was irregular and we had to make many adjustments to correct the issue. We also had
trouble with the track construction as most of our materials were low-tech, makeshift items. If
we had the project to do again, we decided that we would use better materials which would make
the roller coaster easier to construct and we would spend more time developing our ideas to
ensure success before we starting putting anything together. In conclusion, we were successful in
our design although we ran into several problems; however, these problems taught us several
things when it comes to designing a model roller coaster.
References

In the process of coming up with ideas for our project, we examined several of the EF 151
projects in the gallery from previous years and implemented our own ideas to come up with the
best possible design.