What are three things that must be thought about in order to design a great roller coaster ride?
Answers
Answer:
Well, roller coasters are a classic example of converting between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy without changing the total amount of energy in the system, but you can look at them with a lot more complexity than that.
First, you need to be confident the roller coaster will stay up. You start with statics for that, which is pretty much all derived from Newton’s second and third laws (F=ma and action/reaction if you have trouble remembering the order). Statics tells you how much force the weight of the structure will put on all the structural components. Then you have to switch to dynamics to figure out how much stress the moving cars will put on the frame. Still pretty Newtonian, but with more math. You also need some knowledge of materials science to figure out what materials can potentially be used and how big your supports will need to be.
You also need to look at the effects of the ride on the passengers. The human body can only handle so much force/acceleration, so you need to work out the changes in momentum from your initial source of acceleration comes from (compressed air/magnets/tall hill) as well as the angular accelerations going around loops and turns and such. Also potentially worth considering are how the air moves around the cars/blows in people’s faces, which requires some fluid dynamics, the thermodynamic properties of the seats so that you know if they risk burning people on a hot day or after a large number of runs, and how noisy it’s going to be, which requires knowledge of pressure waves/sound.
Some other miscellaneous features include the friction and air resistance of the cars, so you know if the coaster will make it to the end and how strong the brakes need to be. It’d probably also be useful to know a thing or two about vibrations and how you absorb the energy from them, so that the coaster doesn’t shake itself apart or rattle the riders’ teeth out of their heads