Lesson Structure

When students go through this lesson in each section the objectives they will learn are:

• Warm-up –Recognize the places and experiences where people often feel the forces of gravity at work and notice these everyday phenomena. 
• Imagine –Explain how Newton’s Laws, potential energy, and kinetic energy create a thrilling roller coaster experience. 
• Create –Create a simple track to roll and balance a ball. 
• Build –Create a roller coaster with straight tracks and adjust to different heights. 
• Reflect –Reflect on the factors that impacted the track, ball trajectory, and performance of the roller coaster design.
• Challenges –Extend the roller coaster’s experience and connect the design to open-ended, real-world scenarios.

After this lesson students will be able to:

• Apply Newton's Laws through the construction of a roller coaster.
• Use data to prove or disprove that gravity exerts a downward pull on objects.
• Build a track with enough width to support a rolling ball and not fall through. 
• Create separate tracks that can be linked together. 
• Exercise spatial reasoning with space and enough variance in height to hold the track in place.
• Discover the effect of the height of the track on the potential energy of the ball. 
• Tinker with the height of the track in order to ensure ball speeds down the track without falling off or stopping.