Physics of A Coaster
Individuals love to go to the amusement parks and try out the rides that are available. The most common and thrilling ride is the roller coaster. An amusement park is not an amusement park if it does not contain a roller coaster. What makes these roller coasters so "fun" that every amuse parks has one. A lot of people would say it is their extreme high speeds that makes it very exciting. That is a valid answer, but it is the wrong answer. The speed has nothing to do with the excitement. It is more than likely that most people travel faster on their ride along the highway on the way to the amusement park than they would in a roller coaster. Basically the thrill all comes from the acceleration and the feeling of weightlessness that they produce. Roller coasters thrill people because of their ability to accelerate them downward one moment and upwards the next; leftwards one moment and rightwards the next. How does this "thrill machine" work? There are two ways that this question will be answered. First, through the basic principles and then through a more advanced explanation. Roller coaster rides involve a great deal of physics. The ride often begins with a chain and motor which exerts a force on the train of cars to
Now that the basics are understood, we can get into more complex things, such as the physics of making a roller coaster amusing. We have said that it is the acceleration that makes it exciting. The most exciting part of a roller coaster is when it approaches the loops, and centripetal acceleration occurs within those loops. The most common loop of a roller coaster ride is the loop that looks like a tear drop, it is not a perfect circle. These loops are called clothoid loops. A clothoid is a section of a spiral in which the radius is constantly changing, unlike a circle where the radius is constant. The radius at the bottom of a clothoid loop is much larger than the radius at the top of the clothoid loop. As a roller coaster rider travels through a clothoid loop, he/she will experiences an acceleration due to both a change in speed and a change in direction. A rightward moving rider gradually becomes an upward moving rider, then a leftward moving rider, then a downward moving rider, before finally becoming a rightward-moving rider once again. There is a continuing change in the direction of the rider as he/she will moves through the clothoid loop. A change in direction is one thing of an accelerating object. The rider also changes speed. As the rider begins to climb upward the loop, he/she begins to slow down. What we talked about suggests that an increase in height results in a decrease in kinetic energy and speed and a decrease in height results in an increase in kinetic energy and speed. So the rider experiences the greatest speeds at the bottom of the loop. The change in speed as the rider moves through the loop is the second part of acceleration which the riders experiences. A rider who moves through a circular loop with a constant speed, the acceleration is centripetal and towards the center of the circle. In this case of a rider moving through a noncircular loop at non-constant speed, the acceleration of the rider has two components. There is a component which is directed towards the center of the circle (ac) and relates itself to the direction change and the other component is directed tangent (at) to the track and relates itself to the car's change in speed. This tangential component
Some common words found in the essay are:
, normal force, roller coaster, force gravity, bottom loop, kinetic energy, net force, potential energy, moving rider, train cars, air resistance, total mechanical energy, towards center circle, kinetic energy potential, loop normal force, top bottom loop,
Approximate Word count = 1495
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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