Beyond Roller Coaster Project
What this project was about?
For this project we had to create a roller coaster. There was a choice between creating an art piece where you put the tracks on a canvas or a marble machine where you create a roller coaster in a big space. Since everybody wanted to do a marble machine, we took names out of a hat and the first four groups were chosen for marble machines. Once groups were chosen, we started off by drawing out different ideas. Once we came up with one idea, we drew two more drafts and started to work on our coasters.
The Process
In order to create out final project we had to make three drafts. First we created a rough draft where we drew out what our coasters would look like. Then we created a second rough draft where we drew the same thing but we had to add calculations. The calculations were for potential energy, kinetic energy, velocity, circular motion, and much more. The reason we had to do all these calculations was to see if our idea would actually work. Once we did this we created our final drafts which were to finalize our drawings and fix anything the calculations pointed out that wouldn't work. We also had to create a background design that explained what ever concept you had, for example, circular motion, potential energy, etc... We also had to create different things for the track like cutting out dowels, making tacks for the dowels on the tracks. We then drew our coaster out on a piece of cardboard and laid out the track from there. Marble machines didn't have to do this. For me, putting the dowels on the track was very hard so I decided to put the dowels on the track first and then put them on the board. I found this to be way easier and a lot more efficient. This took me so long that my partner and I decided to combine ours to make things faster and easier. Every track we put on the board was tested and it worked. If it didn't we tweaked minor things to make sure it worked. Once this was all done on the cardboard, we then moved our tracks to the real canvas art piece. Once we did this we drew our background designs and the art piece was finished.
Why we changed it?
The reason why we changed our ideas was because we realized that with the amount of space we had, we had to take out things to make the marble actually go fast enough on the track. Second, it was taking too long to finish one track. Third, a lot of our supplies went missing or broke so it was a big time consumer. Last, when we were half way done somebody cut half our tracks. So what we did decided to do was suck it up and start all over again. We decided with what time we had left, we would work together to just create one track. So my partner and I used both of our ideas and created one big track. It turned out well.
Physics Concept
For my physics concept, I did circular motion. (FIRST PICTURE AT THE TOP) What circular motion is, is the motion of an object around a loop/circle at a constant speed. Gravity keeps the marble on the track. The calculation we used for circular motion or centripetal force was AC= Vsquared over R. The reason we had to find this was because if you didn't you wouldn't know if your loop would work or not. If it was too big, where the marble wouldn't make it or if it was too small and the marble would be too fast causing it to fly off.
Reflection
In this project I feel like I put effort but I felt like should have put more. I think if I put more effort I would have gotten a better result out of my Art Piece. But, I still feel as if the effort I put was good. I am proud of what I was able to create in this project. I felt like my partners and I put a lot of effort in to this project making it work. We all worked as a team and we all helped each other out. I was always able to communicate with my partners and help them out even when I was working. I think this project went well but could have been better.