2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

THE PHYSICS OF THE ROLLER COASTER

in an euthanasia roller coaster. The track is design to build up as much g-force possible to pull

the blood out of the patient and cause them to passed out and eventually die (Julijonas

Urbonas, 2010)

The clothoid loop reduces the central acceleration by having larger radius at the bottom half

and smaller radius on the top to provide enough centripetal acceleration with less energy

requirement to move at the top of the loop (Clothoid Loop). Since centripetal acceleration is

velocity squared divided by the radius, the larger radius will result smaller centripetal

acceleration and vice versa. That is the principal theory behind the design of clothoid loops.

The picture below demonstrates the design of a clothoid loop.

Fig 1.4 (Palmer, 2019)

When roller coaster travels a horizontal turn, lateral g-force is created, and it exerts on the

driver the opposite of the turn. If the force is large enough, it could throw the passengers off

or potentially cause physical injury to the passenger’s shoulder if the seatbelts were able to

hold them. To counter this, they build banked turns which converts some of the g-force into

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