Victor's Science Blog

Roller Coaster Project Blog : Victor N. 8B Summary A roller coaster is a track with an operation, that could be a car or cart. There are different elements into a roller coaster, that includes a hill, turn, and a loop. Roller coaster have certain factors that add thrill to the ride, aka "thrill factors." In this Roller Coaster project, we are to create a roller coaster using tubes, dowels, and tape. The roller coaster can only be inside the 4ftx2ft base, and must have a safe stop. I learned that we need to be precise of where we place the tube. If we don't, the tube might be placed wrong, and that will affect our ride. We learned to fix our mistakes, by modifying and making any changes as needed. The ride ended up working as planned. Backward-Looking:  What problems did you encounter while you were working on this piece? How did you solve them? We had encountered some problems while working on this project. For example, when creating our hills and turns, we d...

Weekly Blog : Victor N. 8B Summary When you look at a roller coaster, what do you notice? There are different elements in a roller coaster, containing at least 1 turn, 1 loop, and 1 hill in every roller coaster. Even though you can't see it, it is there. There is some strategy when building a roller coaster, because you need to know what will make the car move. With strategy, there are some constraints into building a roller coaster. You would need to have the roller coaster on a base, and some support holding the ride. And of course, you cannot have the car stop by falling off the track and landing in a pit hole, you need to have a safe stop, so that your riders are safe. As you can see, the elements of a roller coaster makes it so that there is a "thrill factor" in the ride, and so people will be interested in riding. SP2 - Using Models I used models this week, when we started our new project, The Roller Coaster project. We are to create a roller coaster and...

Weekly Blog : Victor N. 8B Image Location Check out the Kinetic and Potential Energy Song! Summary "Energy in motion is kinetic, energy that's waiting is potential. But whether it's kinetic or potential, both of them are energy." Did you know that the greek word for "in" means "en," and the word "ergon" means work translates to energy? When you put these two together, you get energon / work in, which means energy.  Energy means the ability to work and is split into 2 forms, kinetic and potential.  When you have mass and speed, you have to the ability to do work.  Work is measured in the unit of joules, using the formula Force x Distance = work.  1 joule equals the force of 1 newton acting through a distance of one meter.  Kinetic energy is a scalar quantity and is the energy an object has due to its motion. Kinetic energy can be measured using the formula: 1/2(mass x speed^2).  Potential energy is the energy stored and ...