Greenies Get the Science Behind Thrill Rides
Three-day lab wraps up Monday for Algebra II students
With the Mountain State Fair in town, the lesson plan for Algebra II students at Christ School is apropos. Math instructor Thom Flinders and the boys are discovering how to put the thrill in thrill rides through a three-day Bungee Jump Lab.
The engineering that goes into bungee jumping and other amusement park rides stems from Hooke's law. It is a principle of physics that states that the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance scales linearly with respect to that distance.
No one in either of Flinders' two Algebra II: Introduction to Linear Functions classes is being asked to defy gravity with his own body. Rather, the Greenies have created a bungee apparatus out of steel rods and rubber bands, with a 200-gram weight for the test subject. The apparatus is set at different heights. And the boys, who are broken into groups, have to determine how many rubber bands are needed to prevent the weight from hitting the ground. All the data is graphed out on paper.
Points will be awarded Monday for the group that gets their object closest to the ground without it touching. The boys have no idea what height will be used. "It will be a total curveball. They will each get a random height," Flinders said. "A three-day unit like this is a really good way to introduce topics and bring relevancy to what the boys are studying."
The Mountain State Fair runs through Sunday and is only five miles from campus.
