Finding the energy lost due to Kinetic friction on a steel roller coaster

by Mary Elliott

Submitted : Fall 2016

Roller Coasters are giant works of engineering that can either make or break an entertainment company. However, when designing a roller coaster you must take in account if your design is physically possible. Engineers do this by calculating the velocity, and determining changes in Energy throughout the entire track. If the roller coaster has a velocity of zero at the top of an inversion than the car will not go completely around and valley out. Velocity is affected by many outside forces, but for this demonstration we will calculate the non-conservative forces that act opposite the path of movement, or in layman's terms the Kinetic friction. Also in our demonstration, we will ignore any other transfer of energy, and we will assume that the track and car is steel on steel.

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