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Roller Coasters are some things that everyone knows about. They are sources of entertainment for all. Whether it is the adrenaline rush or the simple concepts of danger, people have ventured from all corners of the world to see them. Roller Coasters were first thought of in Russia in the 1700’s. Back then, they were known as the Russian Ice Slides. In a Russian Ice Slide, there would be a nature-created hill, and people would climb to the top with sleds, most commonly found in ice forms, and then, the rider would sit down, and position themselves accordingly. Finally, the fun begins. They are either pushed, or they push themselves, and they speed down the hill, with sand at the bottom to increase friction and stop the sled. One Frenchman decided to take the Ice Slide concept and bring it back to France, but their climate was far too warm, and the Ice Slide melted. So, instead, he made a waxed wooden sled with wheels. Next, he needed tracks, and he wanted to improve the safety, so he designed an experiment. In this experiment, he would start with two people with sleds and place them at the top of a hill. The people with sleds would go down two opposite curved paths to ground level, and then through a helix, a curve that lies on a surface of a cylinder or cone that cuts the element at a constant angle. Roller Coasters are built in a very complex fashion. First off, they need a way too get going. Traditionally, Roller Coasters are launched with a Chain Lift, which uses a metal chain to pull the car up the tracks and collect potential energy. The chain is fashioned in a loop, and there’s a gear at the bottom of the hill that is turned by a motor to keep the chain moving. The car has chain dogs, which are sturdy hinged hooks, which latch on to the chain. At the bottom of the hill, the car dogs catch on to the chain links, and is pulled up the next hill. Aside from all this, the rest of the pushing and pulling on a roller coaster is really just gravity and the exchange between kinetic and potential energy. Another type of launching is called the Catapult-launch Lift, which gives the car lots of kinetic energy in a short amount of time. Most commonly, you will see the linear-induction motor, which uses electromagnets and builds two magnetic fields. One of the fields goes to the track and the other goes to the bottom of the car, and the magnets make each item attracted to another. A motor is used to move the magnetic field on the track, and pulls the train at a very fast speed. This increases speed, precision, control, et cetera. Finally, there are the brakes, which are built inside of the tracks. Multiple clamps are positioned throughout the tracks of the coaster. There is a computer that operates the hydraulics system so it can stop the ride when necessary, and friction gradually slows the train down. There are wooden roller coasters and there are steel roller coasters. Wooden roller coasters usually contain a steel lining on the tracks, but are made out of wood, so are designated as wooden roller coasters. Wooden roller coasters have many limitations, such as the inability to perform an inversion, which is where the roller coaster goes upside down. Wooden roller coasters are also a hassle to keep up with. They need to be lubricated often; they need support maintenance, and re-tracking, and require on-going funding. Steel roller coasters have a track made of entirely steel. The track is tubular and the wheels are polyurethane-coated. They give you a smoother, faster, and taller. They have a larger up-front cost, but require much less to keep running than a wooden coaster. The physics of the roller coaster is very complicated, and includes centripetal acceleration. Centripetal acceleration is the acceleration toward the center that holds a satellite in elliptical orbit. The formula to figure out the centripetal acceleration is ar = v2 / r, which means centripetal acceleration equals velocity in meters per second squared over the radius of the loop, in meters. Centripetal acceleration points toward the center of the circular path of the car, but it’s felt by passengers as a force pushing them to the outer edge of the circular path. The feeling is centrifugal force, but there isn’t a really a force doing this; it’s your inertia. Our bodies desire to continue in the straight line we were going in, but when the turn occurs, our body still tries to do this, but because of the straps, we don’t continue in that straight line. G-Force, one of the Roller Coaster Forces, is used for explaining the relativity effects of centripetal acceleration while riding a roller coaster. G-Force and Centripetal Acceleration are directly related, since if one goes up, so does the other, and vice-versa. When a person is in free fall or in space, they experience 0 G, which contradicts when we are at rest on Earth’s surface, which is 1 G. G is the gravitational pull. While on a roller coaster, the gravitational pull changes. If the track is set as a parabola, then you will actually go into the negative G’s. (Isn’t that cool?) The opposite of this is when you are changing velocity at the bottom of hills. One of the main forces acting on the body is inertia, the tendency of an object to remain in motion, directly related to mass. When you are riding a roller coaster, you tend to move forwards and backwards in your seat, right? That’s because inertia effects your body’s movement. The more mass you have, the more you’ll move back and forth. Every direction you go, every turn you made, every loop-to-loop and every plummet versus every rise effects your body, because of inertia, centripetal acceleration, G-Force, et cetera. There are many roller coasters worldwide that are just absolutely jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring. Probably the best known roller coaster is the Thunderbolt at Kennywood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is a wooden roller coaster built in 1924 by the legendary John Miller, a roller coaster designer. Back then it was known as The Pippin, but now it is the Thunderbolt, because of its redesign in 1968. The Magnum XL-200 is a roller coaster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. It was the first coaster in the world to break the 200-foot barrier when it opened in 1989. It resides over Lake Erie and reaches speeds up to 71 miles per hour. Roller Coasters are magnificent machines of terror. They bring out the fright in some people and the enthusiast in others. You don’t want to miss the thrill of these gravity-defying maniacs.