BALLS OF STEEL Ben Petersen Chris Bowland Matt Jones

Introduction Make a roller coaster to transport an object from a starting point to an end point in fifteen seconds Building materials – Peg board – Wooden dowels – Plastic tubing – Fishing weights – Cotton thread – Scrap wood and metal – Scotch tape, hot glue, and super glue – Dental floss – Wall anchor – Paper clip Total cost: ~ $15

The “Workshop” aka Ben’s garage

Ben’s Garage: Where the magic happens.

Overview Chain reaction: drop the first weight, it sequentially pulls the others down. First marble: the chain reaction pulls out the stopper and lets the first marble go. Pendulum: first marble knocks the pendulum into motion. Second marble: pendulum knocks the second marble which follows the tube and then back and forth along the track. The “Reveal”: the second marble releases the paper covering the image.

I’VE GOT “BALLS OF STEEL”

Energy Conversions Chain reaction: Gravitational potential to kinetic, with loss of energy due to friction (sixteen times!) First marble: Gravitational potential to kinetic with energy lost in the collision with the pendulum Pendulum: Gravitational potential to kinetic with energy lost in the collision with the second marble Second marble: Kinetic energy from the collision and gravitational potential energy converted several times The “Reveal”: Gravitational potential to kinetic energy

Conclusions All three team members worked on building the project for 4 hours Team members spent roughly similar amounts of time working on ideas and the write up/power point and report, both individually and as a group Problems encountered: – Flexible tubing hard to obtain – Weights on the string – Second marble not following track – Picture hard to find for the end – The “Reveal” difficult to actually produce

Sweet, sweet relief (project done and working!)