Exploring Motion with Marble Coasters

The following post has been imported from my original blog. Please excuse any references to Mrs. Patton’s Patch.

We’ve been up to so much in my classroom lately, that I hardly know where to start! One of my favorite projects (and one of my students’ favorites, too) was creating marble roller coasters.

In order to study motion, they were tasked with creating marble roller coasters. I gave them tiered options depending on the challenge they wanted:

Level 1- One hill and a curve

Level 2- Two hills

Level 3- A loop-de-loop

We first found a roller coaster engineer to Skype with which got them VERY excited!

They then experimented with pool noodles split in half and marbles. (If I was pressed for time, I might have just let them tape pool noodles to big pieces of cardboard as their project.)

After that, they created a plan and created their roller coasters using cardboard tubes from paper towel and toilet paper tubes and masking tape.

Here are some of their finished projects.

I really stressed the test and redesign part of the engineering process. This project was a lot of fun, but taught some of my students that failure is definitely okay and is something we have to persevere through.

Looking for other STEM projects, maybe a little simpler? Try these!

Have a great week!

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One Response

Amanda says:

February 15, 2015 at 1:07 am

Your project looks fantastic! I'm sure your students loved it; I like that it taught them that failure is ok, you just have to learn from it. Have a great weekend!

Amanda
A Very Curious Class

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Hi, I'm Colleen!

I’m an educator with a passion for meeting the needs of our GT and high ability learners. I want to support YOU in meeting your students’ needs, too! I’m a proud Texan, a wife, a mother of 2, and I love Jesus!