(Report by Triyash & Jessica):
Lightheaded laughter and high-velocity emotions encompassed our trip to Rainbow’s End.
Our early morning of excitement started off with a worksheet, the main reason we went to rainbow’s end (apart from wanting to miss a day a school and go on the rollercoaster of course!). Our first objective was to spend one hour filling out as much of the rainbows end physics related questions as we could so we could earn our bands to go on the rides. Our second was to fill out the rest of the information we needed such as timing how long the log flume ride lasts for, how many people there are in total on the rollercoaster and what the timing was for the dodgems over a measured length. Last but not least our final objective was to have fun!
This physics trip changed our perspective of how we view theme parks as we soon realised the intricate design and physics involved in each ride. It all made sense, the concepts learnt weren’t theoretical anymore as we realised their relation to the real world. We often aboard rides such as the Stratosfear without a second thought on its inner workings. Essentially, the Stratosfear is a giant pendulum! The said concepts learnt that contribute to its functionality jumped out from the page and onto the structure.
Somewhere in between calculating the maximum speed of the fear fall and estimating the potential energy of the log flume, there was laugher, high pitch squalling and gravity that held together Physics 3U.
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