The Brown Bag STEM Challenge- Roller Coasters

To liven up any Forces and Motions discussion, roller coasters are a sure hit!  This creative activity will help your students explore potential/kinetic energy as well as design their own roller coasters (and what could be more engaging than that?)

In this activity, students work together to create a company that will design a roller coaster.  The teacher will select 3-5 different sites around the world and students will research each site to determine which is the best suited for a roller coaster theme park.

Once an acceptable site has been located, students work together to design and build their roller coasters based on the design parameters that their CEO has laid out for them. Parameters may require a certain number of loops, a certain ride time, or even track length.

As students test their designs, they will collect the data and record observations as to improve performance, meet requirements, etc.

The Brown Bag STEM Challenge bundle pack includes 10 high-interest design challenges that use low-cost materials that (almost all) fit into a brown bag!  Challenges comes complete with design briefs, STEM notebook pages and a PDF slide deck. In each challenge, students work in teams to design, build and test solutions, following NGSS Engineering Design Performance Expectations.

Get the Brown Bag STEM Challenge Bundle Pack with 10 Design Challenges including Roller Coasters!