***** To do this portfolio piece you must first complete this activity in order to have the data for the actual writing piece.

The student activity page is the student's guide to the activity they must complete in order to write their piece.

The portolio writing guide for the student will walk them through each paragraph of the writing assignment.

Materials Needed: Plastic tubing, BB's , stop watch, paper, pencil, the student activity sheet and a meter stick.
1. In your group you will construct a roller coaster using plastic tubing and BB's to investigate the motion and forces acting upon a roller coaster.  We used plastic tubing in 10 ft. pieces.  Our students used the lockers in the hall to tape their tubing on to construct their roller coaster.  You need to make sure that they do not have any hills higher than the first hill of the roller coaster.  Also, they will need to test their roller coaster with a BB to make sure it works before they begin to time it.  They sometimes need to do a little adjusting.

2. You will write an individual lab report upon completion that includes the following sections:
a. Title
b. Purpose- a statement explaining why you did this activity.
c. Procedure- a brief but complete explanation of how you built and tested your roller coaster.
d. Data(graph and data table)- includes your SCALE DRAWING of the working roller coaster and DATA TABLE showing data from 3 trials.
e. Analysis- Explain how the following principles are demonstrated in this experiment.
    i. Where does Newton's 1st law of motion apply in the roller coaster?
    ii. Where does Newton's 3rd law of motion apply in the roller coaster?
    iii. How and where does friction play a part in the experiment?  Identify three
        places on your scale drawing where friction would be the greatest.  What color did
        you use to label these?__________________
    iv. How would gravity play a part in the experiment?  Identify two places on your scale
        drawing where the force of gravity would be greatest and people would feel the
        heaviest?  What color did you use to label these?_____________________

        Identify two places on your scale drawing where the force of gravity would be felt least
        and people would feel light or "weightless."  What color did you use to label these?
        ___________________
 

Data Table
 

Trial Number	Total Length (cm)	Time (Seconds)	Speed (cm/seconds)