Daniela Rocha

Qian

H.Physics

June 3, 2019

Roller Coaster Marbles: How Much Height to Loop the Loop?

Reflection

For this project, my partners and I focused our project on better understanding

kinetic/potential energy and to perform a hands-on experiment to witness the accumulation of

energy up close. The project exhibited how potential energy works and converts into kinetic

energy. I have been eager to start this project since I know everyone in physics class gets to do it.

I was excited to do my own version of it with my partners. Our goal was to make this assignment

create a roller coaster that’ll match the theme we decided on, AstroWorld.

To begin our project, we had to decide on many things. First being our theme and what

materials we would use to start working on our project. As our group tried to discover the correct

slope to make the marbles loop, we realized that lower slopes resulted in unsuccessful attempts

to get the marbles to be able to pass through the loops. Yet, the marbles only made through the

loops when the slope was set to a greater height. We also had to decide on what marbles we

would use. The marbles we used all varied in size as some were small and medium. Their sizes

seemed to not matter as all of our marbles were able to loop successfully through both of the

loops without failure. If they were to fail to loop, I believe it would be due to not enough energy

to sustain a high enough speed that would allow a large marble to loop.

Overall I am satisfied with the work my partners and I put into the project. I learned that

I’m pretty patient when working on an activity that I am actually interested in. My partners and I
exceeded in our communication skills to actually discuss how we would distribute the workload

and how we would present our roller coaster/PowerPoint. We could have improved on a

schedule to work together. It is was difficult to find a day that we were all free on to work

altogether. Next time, I would be sure to spend more time on the project earlier from the due

date.

We had investigated the world by researching the functions of a roller coaster and putting

them into physics terms. We had also researched more about the functions of kinetic and

potential energy. We had communicated ideas by sharing the concept of our roller coaster with

the rest of the class and explaining how roller coasters correlate with physics, how kinetic energy

and potential energy work, and how our roller coaster was effective in letting marbles loop

through both loops.