Making Marble Rollers and Rollercoasters

Andrew McKie

e:amckie@geelongcollege.vic.edu.au t: @AndrewMcKie5

Kelly Watson

e: kelly.watson@geelongcollege.vic.edu.au t: @Kelly_Watson01

James Colbert

e: james.colbert@geelongcollege.vic.edu.au t: @jcolbert1980

Cereal Box Marble Rollers

The design is the key

This challenge involved the students creating and making a cereal box marble roller. The challenge starts with the students bringing in a cereal box from home. From there, the rules are simple; you can only use the cardboard from the cereal box, 30cm of masking tape and a pair of scissors. The task is to make the slowest possible marble roller. But how do you do this? What are the things we need to focus on? How might we design a slow marble roller? Your task tonight is to design, build and test the slowest marble roller you can make. Record how long it takes, then redesign to see if you can make it slower! You have about 20 mins to create. Good Luck!

What did you find out?

Initial rollercoaster creations were very simple, but effective

Rollercoasters Challenge

As the project evolved, the rollercoasters became more elaborate

This challenge involved the students designing, building, testing, redesigning rollercoasters. The aim of the challenge was to create a functioning rollercoaster which had an incline, decline and a loop. Some went further and added a corkscrew. As a class we investigated the different types of forces at work and researched various types of rollercoasters.

We asked the students to show us their understands of how they thought a rollercoaster worked and they drew this in their visual planners. We have some examples for you.

Tonight your task will be to build a simple tubing rollercoaster that has a decline, an incline and a loop. It has to be free standing. See what you can come up with. You'll have 20mins.

Attached is our planning document and assessment rubric. It is for 9 sessions, but some of those sessions can go over multiple days.

Planning

Assessment Rubric

At the conclusion of the project the students exhibited their work for the rest of the class.

Appreciate

Credits:

Created with images by paulbr75 - "roller coaster ride fun" • aronbaker2 - "questions" • ReneS - "Six Flags, New England, Batman Rollercoaster" • Wokandapix - "thanks word letters"