WHAT MAKES ROLLER

COASTERS WORK?

Carson Harris
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Carson Harris

Professor Sidibe

Physics 100

6/9/17

What Makes Roller Coasters Work?

There is a lot of components that go into making a roller coaster. You have to know what

kind of track you want, wood or metal, how many cars you want which mean more mass, how

many loop-de-loops, and most importantly how fast you want it to go or the velocity or the cars.

There are more things that you have to know before you start designing as well but once you

have all the components that you want to go into how you want your roller coaster to look and

how you want it to act it is time to start with the real work behind a roller coaster, the physics.

There are so many different things that have to be calculated and thought about when designing

and building a roller coaster. You have to find the angles at which your hills are going to drop at

and height of the drops, and the second hill has to be also at the right angle and height as to not

make the cars fly off the track and also not too tall as to make the car too slow for the rest of the

ride. You also have to calculate in the centripetal force of the loops, and every tiny detail that

goes in to making a fun and fast but also a very safe ride. Once you have all of your looks and

scare factor decided then you start with the calculations.

A roller coaster has a lot of physics that goes into the making, but when it comes down to

it the main principle is the shift between potential and kinetic energy. Conceptual Physics defines

potential energy as the energy of position. This is the amount of energy you have when you are

at rest or at a given spot. To find your potential energy you multiply your mass, height and

gravity (9.81) all together. Conceptual Physics defines kinetic energy as the energy of motion.
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When you want to find the amount of energy something has when it is moving you want to know

the kinetic energy. It can be found by multiplying the mass of the object by the velocity squared

and then multiplied by ½. The unit that is used when describing how much energy something has

is Joules (J). So if the amount of energy that the cart at the top of the hill has when you calculate

the potential energy is 36,000 you would say the potential energy is 36,000 Joules. When the car

of the roller coaster is sitting at the top of a hill that is when they have the most potential energy,

and the very least amount of kinetic energy. This is because the car is not moving and for kinetic

energy you need to have movement. Once the roller coaster starts to accelerate down the hill it

gains kinetic energy and loses is potential energy it had before. The amount of energy that

something, such as a roller coaster, has at the beginning is all it gets, there is no adding energy

back in it can only lose energy. When the car of a roller coaster is at the very bottom of the first

decline and right in between two hills the car has the most amount of kinetic energy that it will

have on the ride. The amount of energy at the beginning will be enough to push the car on

through the entire track if the roller coaster was designed properly. A car loses some of the

energy that is starts out with though. The car will lose some energy to friction between the

wheels and the track and also with air resistance. As a car goes further along the track it

continues to lose its energy and eventually the roller coaster has to stop. When the cars are losing

energy, you will start to notice it on the track. The hills begin to get smaller, the loop-de-loops

will begin to have a smaller circumference and eventually the ride will flatten out and the

remaining energy that the cars have is spent up and car is stopped, by an external force known as

friction, by a breaking system.

The type of breaks that is most common on rollercoaster today ae called fin breaks. These

breaks are very similar to how automotive breaks work. Along the bottom of the cars of the
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coaster are thick metal fins that are squeezed by pads to slow the cars. The hydraulic controlled

breaks are triggered when sensors on both the track and the front cars meet. This causes the pad

to close around the metal fins on the cars and slows down the ride and gradually bringing it to a

stop. A fairly new type of breaking system are electromagnetic breaks. The breaks are a fairly

simple concept but are very powerful and are able to slow things down quickly and efficiently.

When the car of the roller coaster passes by the magnets it creates a magnetic field. The car tries

to repel from the magnets at the beginning which slows the cars down and then towards the end

of the magnets there is an attraction with the magnets and the car. This causes the car to slow

down even further (Explain That Stuff!, 2017). There are multiple of the magnets on both sides

and this allows the cars to slow down to enough to where the cars can be latched on at the bottom

and pulled by the same mechanism that pulls the ride up the first hill. Another type of break this

isn’t used very often is known as a skid break. This type of system uses a wheel that when

triggered lift up a wheel that is covered in a material to give friction to the bottom of the cars.

This wheel on the bottom also gradually slows and stops the cars but is less commonly used as it

was one of the very first breaking systems on rollercoasters and is not as efficient.

Breaks are not the only friction that a roller coaster ride feels the force of friction though.

As soon as the car releases and drops down the first hill the cars are losing energy to friction. On

a roller coaster, there are wheels that are made out of polyurethane which makes the ride very

efficient and does not create a chemical bond with the rail. Polyurethane is a softer material, and

using this material reduces the amount of vibration the ride has but also creates more friction.

Another material used is nylon, which is a harder plastic and has the opposite affect that

polyurethane has. Nylon makes for more vibration but with little friction creates a faster ride.

Though faster nylon wheels wear the track down more (coaster101, 2011). Parks will sometimes
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use both types of wheels on their cars in order to keep their ride in the right specifications.

Knowing the amount of friction is important when it comes to roller coasters because you can

calculate how much of the cars energy is lost due to friction. To do this you first have to find

how much friction there of the ride. You have to know the friction coefficient which is how

much friction there is between the two objects and you multiply that by the acceleration and the

mass of the object. After finding the amount of friction that the ride has you need to find how

much energy the ride has initially or he potential energy which can be found by multiplying the

height of the hill, the mass and gravity (9.81). You then need to find the amount of work done by

the force of friction, this equation is force multiplied by distance. You would take the force that

was found earlier and multiply it by the distance of the track. Taking the potential energy, you

would subtract the work done by friction, because it is a negative quantity is it is acting against

the car going down the hill. This gives you the final energy at the bottom of the hill. With this

number, you could find the velocity at the bottom of the hill. You set it equal to ½*m*v^2

(kinetic energy formula) and solve for ‘v’ using algebra.

Energy can also be lost in the car of a roller coaster by air resistance slowing the car

down. Finding this is fairly easy you just need to know a few numbers before you start. You have

to know the velocity, the area of the objects face that is facing where you are calculation, air

density and the drag coefficient of the material in air. Once you have those number you can

calculate the air resistance by multiplying the air density, drag coefficient and the area and

dividing the quantity by two. You take that number and multiply it by the velocity squared. This

gives you the amount of force that that is applied by air. Both friction of the track against the

wheels and the air resistance are factored in when creating the roller coasters and some guess

work has to come into play when calculating both of these. Engineers have to factor in the air
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resistance that is caused by the people sitting in the seats and also, they have to factor in the

weight of them. Doing this they add weight to the overall weight of car in the calculations and

they do it with no people added in. This is to give a sort of control to work with when designing.

Centripetal force is another property of physics that is used when making some roller

coasters. When a roller goes upside down anywhere on the track especially on a loop-de-loop.

For loop-de-loops you are able to calculate the amount force that being put on the car

perpendicular to the track. To do this you use the formula for force which is mass multiplied by

acceleration. The acceleration that you would use is determined by where on the loop you want

to find the force, and you find the change in velocity and divide it by the change in time.

Multiplying the acceleration by the mass will give you the net force. To get the normal force you

have first find the gravitational force which is the mass multiplied by 9.81 m/s/s, and with this

number you, add to (if you are looking at the bottom of the loop) or subtract from (if you are

looking at the top of the loop) the net force. Normal force in a loop is the reason why we feel

weightless at the top and heavy at the bottom. When the normal force if less then what a person

weighs in the car then that person will feel the sensation of having no weight, though they still do

have weight. The acceleration of the car is keeping you in your seat as gravity is trying to pull

you down and for a moment even though you are being pulled toward your seat you have that

feeling of free fall at the very top before accelerating downward. At this moment, you feel as

though you feel super heavy, this is because you have two forces acting on your body. You have

the centripetal force pulling your body toward the outside of the loop because you are

accelerating downward, and you also have the force of gravity pulling your body downward.

G-force is the number of times that the force of gravity is felt. For example, 1 G is what

you feel when you are standing normally on the ground, this is 9.8 N/kg. When you are
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experiencing 2 G’s you are feeling 19.6 N/kg. This goes on just by multiplying. Tolerance for g-

force depends on the person, but one can only withstand so many g’s for so long. Some people

can withstand super high g’s such as the Air Force Officer who felt 46.2 g’s only for a couple

seconds and survived. For an average roller coaster, the amount of g’s a rider will experience is

about 2-3 g’s. Roller coasters feel g’s when they do pretty much anything; turning, going up a

hill, going down a hill, going around a loop. When going around a corner in you feel the force

pulling you towards one side of the car, this is when you are going slow too. In a roller coaster if

you were to take a corner that is perfectly horizontal the forces would throw you around in the

car of the coaster. To allow a roller coaster car to turn without being thrown around too much

they make what are called banked turns. This is a turn that is slightly tilted on the opposite side

that you are turning. So, if you are tuning right the left side of the tracked would be high and vice

versa. This allows for the for the people on the ride to still feel being pulled by the turn but they

are also being pulled downward on the side by gravity.

Almost all of these properties of physics that go into making a roller coaster can be

wrapped up in to three very important laws that define how all motion is. The three laws of

motion were discovered by Issac Newton in 1666. His first law states that an object in motion

tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by a force.

This means exactly what is states, an object will not move or stop unless another object or force

interferes. A roller coaster will stay right at the starting point unless the operator turns on the

machine that grabs the bottom with a chain and pulls the carts up to the top of the hill. At the top

of the hill the force that pulls the cars down the hill is gravity and without it the cars would just

sit at the top waiting for something to push it. For the second part of the law, an object in motion

stays in motion, theoretically if friction and air resistance did not apply a roller coaster would go
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on and on forever until brakes or something stopped it. With air resistance and friction, the cars

still go or a long time but like stated above the hills have to gradually get smaller because the

amount of energy eventually is used up. This means that friction and air resistance are the force

that acts upon the cars to slow and eventually stop them.

Newton’s second law states that an objects acceleration is directly affected by the force

acting upon the object and inversely on the objects mass. This can be written as an equation of:

a=fnet/m. Where a is acceleration fnet is the net force acting on the object and m is mass. This

equation is often written as fnet= m*a. This law is true for any moving objects and can be used in

a number of ways. In a roller coaster car, you and the cars of the coaster have mass and when

gravity pulls the car down the hill you have an acceleration. Your mass and the mass of the cars

are a constant and will not change so when the force of the car changes it is directly because

there is a change in acceleration. Which can be both increasing acceleration, like when you are

going down a hill, or a decrease in acceleration, which is when you are headed up hill. Though

changes in acceleration are mainly because of friction. When there is no acceleration which

means you have a constant velocity you would feel no force other than the gravitational force.

For gravitational force, instead of using the carts acceleration, because there is none so it would

be 0, you use gravity as your acceleration, which is 9.8m/s/s.

Newtons third law states that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This law is saying that is every force that is applying force or being applied for to gives a

reaction that is opposite to the amount of force and is also equal. In a roller coaster, you feel all

sorts of forces on your body. When you are sitting in your seat waiting for the ride to start you

there is the force of you pushing on the chair and the chair is pushing back at you with the same

amount of force. When doing a loop-de-loop you feel the normal force pulling you back into
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your chair even though you are upside down. The force that is keeping the coaster on the track is

keeping you to your seat. In newer roller coasters riders can be exposed to high g-forces. When

the cars make a 3 g-force drop your body will be subjected to the force that is equal to three

times that of the amount as the pull of gravity regularly.

Engineers when they are designing a roller coaster they think about every little detail that

goes into making something that is safe for someone to ride in but also exhilarating and makes

people want to keep riding it. The roller coasters that are built today are calculated and run

through programs that show every detail of the rollercoaster before it is built. When they have a

safe roller coaster on the simulator they build scale models of the coaster to see how it will look

and to remove any kinks in the design plan before they finally build the coaster. Everything is

carefully calculated and planned out and physics is used to do all of this. Every property

discussed in this essay and more are used to get the details perfect and ready to ride.
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Works Cited

Palmer, Roxanne. "Roller Coaster Science: Thrills, Chills, and Physics." World Science Festival.

World Science Foundation, 04 Apr. 2017. Web. 02 June 2017.

Weisenberger, Nick. Coasters 101: An Engineer's Guide to Roller Coaster Design. United States:

Unknown, 2015. N. pag. Print.

Woodford, Chris. "How Rollercoasters Work | Science of Rollercoasters." Explain That Stuff. N.p., 14

Dec. 2016. Web. 04 June 2017.