For the fifth year in a row, students in Tecumseh High School’s Honors Physics class competed in a roller coaster building contest. The contest is the brainchild of physics teacher, Mr. Mark Holbrook, who wanted to offer his students an opportunity to become “directors and managers of their own learning process.”
The Roller Coaster project provides Holbrook’s students with an opportunity to use complex math and science skills to design, implement, construct, and demonstrate a working roller coaster. Students are broken up into building teams and have five months to build their coasters. Students are also required to hand in a design booklet that contains the final Physics mathematical calculations of their coaster, blueprints, testing analysis, and conclusions.
Holbrook says the most important aspect of the Roller Coaster project is giving students a hands-on opportunity to apply and investigate the laws of Physics. Solving problems while designing their roller coasters helps students develop teamwork, problem solving, research gathering, and time management skills they will use throughout life.
Teams are only allowed to use paper-based products to build the coaster and track. A marble serves as a coaster cart. Teams are also permitted to use any other decorations they feel will add to their project, such as lights and sound, as long as they are not part of the track itself. A group of teachers and community members judge each coaster based on its theme, creativity, construction, engineering, complexity, and thrills.
Overall, students seem to enjoy the project, which is completed almost entirely on their own time after school. Holbrook says his favorite part of the project is watching his students’ personalities come through in the coaster designs.
Senior Jason Holbrook’s team included seniors Jerrod Gruber and Elizabeth Gomez. The team built the “Attack of the Kraken,” a Pirate-themed coaster. Holbrook says he enjoyed building the mythical “Kraken” which was an integral part of his team’s design. The creature was formed out of a circular drum box painted green and featured “tentacles” the team fashioned from wrapping paper tubes left over from Christmas. They also attached teeth to make it “look more threatening.” Holbrook says he learned time management and advises future teams to not procrastinate. “Building a coaster like this takes a lot of time and dedication so the sooner you start the better.”
Senior Caleb Linder says he learned a similar lesson. Linder was on a team with seniors John Driscoll, Will Sims, and Sean Collins. The team expanded on Driscoll’s idea and built “A Knight in Gotham,” a Batman-themed coaster. Linder sums up the engineering difficulty teams experience by being limited to using paper building supplies, “The hardest part of working on the coaster was getting the track together. We started out with a cardstock paper track but realized early on it was too flimsy. After learning this, we had to trash the entire track we had created and restart building with an all cardboard track so it would hold up better.” Linder also has practical advice for future coaster teams, “...start collecting cardboard early!”
For the past several years, Tecumseh’s Physics classes have taken a field trip to Kings Island on the park’s “Math and Science Education Days.” The winning teams’ prizes vary from tickets to Kings Island to receiving money to spend in the park. According to Mark Holbrook, this year’s prize donors include Security National Bank, Spare Space, New Carlisle Rotary, Peter Scarff, Mark Wardley, Vancrest of New Carlisle, and Kerry Estes.
