We started out with some simpler, beginner challenges. Build a drop that makes your marble land in a paper cup. Then build a drop that incorporates a vertical loop, then deposits the marble in a cup. I let the kids choose their own working groups, or choose to work independently.
At this point, we were focusing on understanding some of the basic physics involved, and the mechanics of our specific building materials. We took a quick break to regroup and we talked about some of the things we were noticing. Some of the older kids have already been exposed to some physics terms that were useful as we discussed what we were noticing. Here's a link to a great website that talks about energy transformation along a roller coaster track. It has a neat animation that shows the change in energy. Here's a link to a cool video from MIT demonstrating the minimum height needed for a released ball to make it around a (round) loop. Finally, here's a link to a (unnecessarily drawn out) video of a stunt man actually running a loop-the-loop.
We had a little while before lunch, and decided to open up the challenge to do some free building that we would continue later, too. During our free building time, we had a visit from a special guest: the mayor of our city!
Mayor Galbraith (and her small friend!) joined us for some building, and answered some GREAT questions:
- What kinds of things did you tell people you would do so they would vote for you?
- What do you like to do with kids?
- Will you build marble roller coasters at work?
- Did you know you wanted to be a mayor when you were a kid?
And without further ado, we got right back into building.
After lunch, we regrouped and talked about some engineering constraints that a roller coaster designer might be asked to follow. Here are some questions that an engineer might ask the theme park company before deciding to propose a roller coaster design:
- What building materials do you prefer, or what's available?
- What's my budget?
- When does the roller coaster need to be finished?
- What are the safety constraints?
- What kind of weather does this amusement park get?
- How much maintenance are you willing to do?
- What features do you want to see incorporated? Some ideas: loops, corkscrews, turns, drops, high maximum speed
At this point, things got VERY SERIOUS. We worked together to develop a scoring rubric and the teams split up to tackle the challenge:
Building to specific constraints meant that some of our designs got very complicated! In fact, when it was time to add up our scores, only the very simplest designs were even able to pass a marble all the way down to the cup. We talked about some of the challenges we'd faced, and we all agreed that the scoring was just a fun way to close out the activity, and wasn't meant to be a real competition.
Finally, we took a little time for journalling. The kids are getting more and more serious about this. It is always hard to settle down for some quiet reflection, but once they do, they're generating some awesome work. I think some of them will really enjoy reviewing their journals after camp ends -- they're turning into great mementos of their time in camp!
Finally, we made a quick Vine showing a bit of the building and the tracks in use, here it is! Hope everyone had a great day!
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