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Designing Roller Coasters
From the time he was 8 years old, Chris Gray knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to design and build roller coasters that would be so thrilling people would scream as they moved up and down on the ride.
As a young person, Chris started out building model roller coasters. Today, he is a mechanical engineer. He designs roller coasters that are built around the world. He was involved in 7 of the world’s top 25 wooden roller coasters.
Using Forces in a Ride
People who design a roller coaster need to know about forces and motion. Roller coasters work because of gravity. Remember that gravity is a force that attracts all matter, and Earth’s gravity pulls down on all objects on Earth’s surface.
Let’s begin with the basic structure of a roller coaster. All roller coasters are made up of connected cars that move on tracks, like trains do. But unlike a train, roller coasters don’t have a motor to make them move.
Instead, the cars are pulled to the top of the first hill, usually with a long chain that runs underneath the tracks. Together, the cars and the track form an energy system.
You may have noticed that the first hill of a roller coaster is always the tallest. This is done on purpose. As the roller coaster cars move up the hill, they are getting more potential energy. This form of potential energy is called gravitational energy. Gravitational energy is the energy stored in an object as a result of its vertical position or height above the ground.
The higher up an object is, the more gravitational potential energy it has stored. As soon as those roller coaster cars begin to move downhill, that gravitational energy changes to kinetic energy. As the cars move around the track, energy is constantly changing between potential and kinetic energy.
The first hill on a roller coaster has to be the highest. This is because as the roller coaster cars move over the tracks, energy transfers out of the system. Friction is one force that transfers energy out of the system as the cars rub against the track.
Drag is another force that transfers energy out of a system. Drag is similar to friction, but it occurs between a solid substance and a fluid such as air.
As the roller coaster cars move over the tracks, both friction and drag cause energy to transfer out of the system. This means that the roller coaster has less energy at the end of the ride than it does at the start of the ride.
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