Visual appearance: 

QUESTION: A roller coaster car starts from rest point A. What is the speed of this car at point C if the track is frictionless?

finished product included with solution here: 

 

Design: 

Inspiration for the rollercoaster and cart

Original sketch/first design on paper:

 

Progression: 

While looking through the workbook for problems, I found around 2 that I was sure were possible to print out while using other non-3D printed objects to tie the whole project together. At first, I wanted to print a pendulum with one 3D printed sphere and one 3D printed rectangular top so it could be attached with string. Once I saw that most of the objects are already pre-made on Tinkercad, I found that quite simple and not imaginative enough so, I decided to go with my second option, the roller coaster question. When I first started playing around with Tinkercad, I tried to make it using the already pre-made pieces but none of them seemed to line up perfectly or if they did they were hollow inside which I didn’t want. So I attempted to use the drawing tool to draw out both the cart and the roller coaster, which was very hard to draw on a laptop. The image below is what my first unedited copy looked like: 

I left it like that for a while until I remembered that I recently bought an Ipad so I decided to not only make changes to the original design but I also tried to add components that would make the cart function (with wheels and attachments for the wheels) and also I made the roller coaster part more sturdy and as straight as possible while drawing. view images below:

The only pre-made object I used was the red block because I found that making all the sides straight was quite a challenge. The hardest part of creating the “new” model that ended up being the one I printed out was the tiny wheels and attachments (in orange.) I worked really hard to make sure that the longer portion that would attach to the wheels was small enough to fit inside the hollow cylinder, so it could rotate. Unfortunately, when the design printed out, I wasn’t expecting it to be that small so the only 2 things that were graspable were the box/”the cart” and the roller coaster. Instead, I found some old lego pieces that I had to alter but ended up fitting perfectly on the cart. The wheels don’t fit on the actual track but serve as a guide for the cart. (view Visual Appearance) 

Problem: 

My problem was question number 8 on page 165 in the workbook. The question is asking us to find the speed of the cart at point C if the track had no friction. Here is the explanation of the problem we are trying to solve:

Next, here is the whole solution used once we can comprehend what the question is asking us. Here: 

Description: 

Describing my project: For this project, I chose question #8 in the workbook (on page 165). First off, I decided that I wanted a project that could stand alone and that didn’t need separate pieces to hold together, therefore, I sketched the design so that the rollercoaster could stand on it’s own and so that I could also indicate the measurments of each standing pole. The rollercoaster is suppose to replicate the original one in the workbook except that it is not to scale and that it is all one piece instead of multiple pieces which in my opinion would look much better printed out than multiple pieces stuck together. On the project, I could also stick on the measurments easier on each pole and add when the starting point and ending point of the question were (A & C). For the cart, I wanted something that could move along on it’s own, therefore after many trials and error, I optded out to use legos to construct the wheels and attachements to the bas of the cart. I also added a lego peice at the end of the rollercoaster to make sure that the cart stops as close to point C as possible from point A. For the problem, firstly I found everything that was already given to us then, I plugged in the formula to find the final velocity and just add in the numbers we originally found. (More indept explanation in: Problem.)