Six Flags Roller Coaster Design Project

Motion and Energy

How Roller Coasters Work
Go to this site first. It has LOTS of excellent information and animations!! Make sure you read through all the different pages.

Roller Coaster Physics
Scientific principles behind roller coasters

Amusement Parks and Roller Coasters
This site has a good explanation of energy transformation on a roller coaster.

Amusement Park Physics
How does a roller coaster work?

Energy Transformations
This page does an EXCELLENT job showing the transformation between KE and GPE on a roller coaster. You will be creating "Energy Bar Charts" just like this for your design!

Engineering Design

Roller Coaster Elements
Wikipedia site which explains the many possible design elements

More Coaster Elements

Machines! Roller Coaster video
Explains how a roller coaster stays on its track

How does that work?
Detailed information on safety features and the lifting chain of roller coasters

Materials give roller coaster enthusiasts a reason to scream

http://www.jeremyreid.com/
Website for a man who designed and built his own roller coaster...in his backyard! We should all be so lucky.

Pedal-powered roller coaster in Japan

Launch Roller Coasters

Launch roller coaster mechanisms
Discusses the different techniques used to launch a catapult from the beginning at very fast speeds.

Sneak preview of Cheetah Hunt roller coaster at Busch Gardens
This video shows the brand new coaster in FL. Not only does it have a great theme and design elements, but it "launches" the car at three different points.

All you ever wanted to know about Kingda Ka (pdf)
This document is very informative.

Rock 'n Roller Coaster website

Roller Coaster Simulations

Phet Energy Skate Park

Coaster Creator
You will need to register for free in order to use the simulation. It's worth it though!

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hmsc/activities/simulations/gr4/unitf.html

Amusement Park Physics:
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/parkphysics/coaster/

Funderstanding Site:
http://www.funderstanding.com/k12/coaster/

Discovery Site:
http://dsc.discovery.com/games/coasters/interactive.html

 

Project Information

Six Flags proposal handout (pdf)

Roller coaster project organizer (doc)

Roller coaster design exemplars

White City Wikipedia page

More Information on the White City amusement park
I also have a really cool book in class with lots of information and pictures from the old amusement park.

 Statistics and Theme Parks

 http://www.rcdb.com/
Statistics on 600 different roller coasters around the world

 http://ultimaterollercoaster.com/coasters/records/
All about roller coaster records

Six Flags Theme Parks

Busch Gardens

Ferrari World Abu Dhabi

Cedar Point

Convert Your Units!!

Unit Analysis Converter
Use this site to easily convert units such as "feet to meters" and "mi/hr to m/s". This will be helpful trying to come up with statistics for your original design.