Photographer: Clay Patton, COMM 1318 Photography 1
It took a lot of planning, scissors, and tape. But students in physics lab recently turned recycled junk into “rollercoasters” strong enough to race marbles.
Physics Professor Kim Bouldin says this lab gets students to think “outside the box”. Although ironically, students sorted through boxes and shelves of recycled materials to find “rollercoaster” building supplies.
The planning process is critical. Some students created funnel shapes out of poster board. Others used the whiteboard as a backdrop.
The basic rules for the coaster challenge appeared on the whiteboard at the front of the class.
There had to be a 180 as well as a 360 degree turn. And ultimately, the longest time recorded on the marble rollercoaster run with motion, wins the challenge.
Bouldin says students have to come up with their own solutions to problems in this lab. “That’s an opportunity they rarely get,” she says.
With a lot of poster board strips, tape, whiteboard, cart, and a water bottle finish, the second-place winning team: “Team ZMK”. The team’s runtime was 13.5 seconds.
And the first-place winning team, also using lots of poster board strips, tape, and whiteboard, was team “Just Barely”.
The winning time: 15.5 seconds.
Congratulations teams!
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