Roller Coaster Design using Inertia
- Your inertia wants you to stay in a straight line but the roller coaster pushes you up into a loop
- When you begin to enter the loop, your acceleration moves you along with the coaster and pushes you out of you seat, while your inertia wants to keep you in a straight line, therefore it pushes you down back into your seat as you go around the loop
Changing the Design of the Loop
- Before 1901, The roller coaster loops were designed as perfect circular loops
- This design had the same angle of trank the entire way through, with made it harder for the ride to accelerate
- A large amount of force was needed to get the car all the way up to the top of the loop because of the other forces acting upon it ( gravity, inertia, etc.)
- This amount of force caused great discomfort as well as several neck injuries
- The design was then changed to the modern day shape in 1901 by Edwin Prescott who designed the Loop-the-Loop on Coney Island
- The new revised design made the loop into a teardrop shape
- The angle at the top of the loop was now sharper than the angle of the track at the sides
- This way, the the car would have an adequate acceleration at the top of the loop and reduced acceleration forces on the side
- This gives them enough force to run the ride but not too much that the ride would be dangerous
Bibliography
- http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/roller-coaster7.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_loop
Thank You!!