Hey viewers, it may have been a while but we bloggers have gotten our groove back on track.You may have already read about this in the West Bend Daily News but recently the Pathways 7th and 8th grade students designed rollercoasters. As part of the Transportation career cluster, we learned about terms such as; kinetic energy, potential energy, inertia, and each of Newton’s Laws. This eventually led to us designing our own roller coasters! As we went through the design process we discovered ways to incorporate a loop, a 90° turn, a jump, and a hill. We needed to rely only on gravity to have a marble reach the end of the track. After we had a successful design we had to calculate the energy our coasters produced and write a narrative, persuasive, or informative essay. This was to get across the point of view from a rider, a marketer, or an engineer’s perspective. It was challenging incorporating the terms and calculations in our final paper to show the depth of our understanding of the concepts we explored. All in all, it was a neat learning experience designing a roller coaster.
~Adam Fehring
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| Samwise Baker and Dylan Olson double check their model's calculations. |
