Take a marble out for a roll. Using a section of flexible tubing, pupils build a roller coaster that will allow for a marble to act as the car. Learners create a loop, hill, and jump in their coasters by taping the tubing to different supports. The scholars test their designs by trying to get the marble all the way along the tube and into a cup at the end.

Concepts

kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, potential energy, roller coasters

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Additional Tags

science

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Instructional Ideas

• Create roller coasters from the same length of tubing and determine which is faster
• If the track fails have pupils determine what went wrong and fix it

Classroom Considerations

• Requires space large enough to lay out the six feet of roller coaster track

Pros

• Includes suggestions for extensions
• Contains a scientific description of what is happening with the roller coaster

Cons

• None