A new rollercoaster for Screamorama Amusement Park just got approved for further engineering, development and construction!! This is exciting. My creative design team designed and created a working prototype of this rollercoaster, to pitch it to the CEO’s of Screamorama (aka the teachers). There was about a dozen rollercoaster pitches, and ours was the first choice to be continued. 

On our path to victory, my group (Keenan, Kai, Makai, Jackson) had to take several factors into consideration, including budget, design, space constraints, support infrastructure limitations, materials, and points per rollercoaster thrill. The suggested budget was 1 million $. These were the materials we had access to, for designing our (prototype) rollercoaster:

• Plumbing insulation tubes cut in half – $150,000 per tube
• Toothpicks – $100,000 per dozen
• Tape – $50,000 per 3 feet
• Scissors – free
• Marble – first one free, second one $50,000

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The class then briefly went over science concepts of where the most energy is found in rollercoasters, and how the law of conservation will effect our roller coaster design. The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is only transformed or transferred from one type of energy to another. We experimented with potential and kinetic energy in rollercoasters with this PHET simulator. I learnt that potential energy is energy is stored and can be ready to release. Potential energy is often found at the highest points of rollercoasters. Kinetic energy is the energy of movement. It is often at it’s peak after the roller coaster gains speed down a steep hill, right before it’s about to go back upwards. This is when potential energy transfers into kinetic energy and then vice versa, as it goes back up the hill.

We then discussed what type of features we wanted on our roller coaster prototype model. My group decide on a spiral, into a drop that went into a corkscrew, and a hill, and a stopping mechanism. This was ambitious for the amount of materials we had. We ordered our materials (from the teachers) while staying on budget. Here was our rough croquis.

We ended up having to slightly alter routes due to material constraints and support constraints. We originally planned to support the toilet paper roll rollercoaster, with books but we only had one chair for support and platform. The marble was our roller coaster cart, and te marble had to complete the roller coaster. 

I primarily helped construct the starting spiral, taping each half toilet paper roll on the perfect angle to construct a beautiful spiral. Others worked on the corkscrew and the drop and then we all connected it together, taping it at an angle onto the chair. Our original weighted marble stopping mechanism wasn’t going to work, so we added toothpicks at the ending point of the roller coaster, to slow down the marbles so it didn’t roll off the end on the track. It worked!

We used our creative skills and came up with a name for our roller coaster. We ended up “reaching a consensus” on “The Rizzard Of Oz”. I drew out the name sign.

We came in first, winning the bid for this year’s new roller coaster at Screamorama with a whopping 24 pts! Honourable mentions to Vomit Comet, the B.C. Thriller, and Topsy Turny.

Here’s our roller coaster prototype:

 

Well that was an interesting skill sprint! It reminded me a bit of a D.I. Instant challenge, except a bit longer. It makes you use your quick problem solving, creating and executing skills.

Thanks for reading!