Potential and Kinetic Energy

Potential and Kinectic energy is an intersting topic for students to explore. This course we talked a lot about rollercoasters. Rollercoasters are something that most students can relate to since most of them have probably ridden them at amusment parks. This is an excellent way to connect students to the idea of potential and kinetic energy. The need to understand that when the roller coaster reaches the top of the hill it has potential energy and as it is going do the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. There are a lot of fun websites that deal with designing rollercoasters with the topic of potential and kinetic energy. One can be found here http://www.jason.org/digital_library/4851.aspx. The students get to determine how many cars (3-8) they add and then design the track using hills and loops, but they coaster needs to hae enough energy to make it and stop at the end of the track without crashing. It shows the potential and kinetic energy as the coaster moves along the track. This could help students when they are designing their own coasters like the one we read about using the foam insulation and a ball.

Here are a few more sites that offer rollercoaster simulations some do not demonstrate potential and kinectic energy, but could be fun to play with and have the students explore various designs.
http://www.funderstanding.com/coaster
http://kids.discovery.com/games/rollercoasters/buildacoaster.html

Some interesting websites dealing with rollercoasters
this one has a demo video http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/roller-coaster3.htm
http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster.html
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.phys.mfe.zsplcar/
http://www.miamisci.org/af/sln/mummy/raceways.html

To help with the idea of potential and kinetic energy I would also show the BrainPop videos on both topics found here
http://www.brainpop.com/science/energy/potentialenergy/
http://www.brainpop.com/science/energy/kineticenergy/

What a better way to relate to a scientific topic than with something most students are familar with. After watching and working with some of these demonstrations it would directly into the Rollercoaster challenge.