![]() The Millennium Force roller coaster at Cedar Point Amusement Park. ![]() Any loose objects, like jewelry and purses float along with them. The passengers become weightless and actually float above the seat. Like the students on the roller coaster, the passengers rise out of their seats.īecause they and the seat are falling at the same rate, the passengers' bodies aren't pushing on the seats anymore. For a brief period, while the passenger cars free-fall, gravity seems to be suspended. Other rides, such as Cedar Point's Power Tower, drop straight down from high in the air. Similarly, acceleration during launch makes astronauts in the space shuttle feel two to three times heavier than they are.Ĭoasters aren't the only amusement park attractions that can make students feel like space travelers. "That's the sensation of gravity and the acceleration of the roller coaster car catching them to start up the next hill," Hall said. ![]() As a coaster reaches the bottom of a hill or goes around a curve, the students feel their bodies pressing into their seats. Roller coasters cause a series of low- and high-gravity sensations that mimic the free falls and accelerations of airplanes and spacecraft. She led a team of Glenn and NASA Plum Brook Station employees who taught science lessons during Cedar Point's Math and Science Week in May. Hall works in the International Space Station Research Project Office at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "Amusement parks are a great place to learn about spaceflight because a lot of the sensations you feel on roller coasters, like free fall and acceleration, are the same sensations that astronauts experience," said aerospace engineer Nancy Hall. It's similar to what astronauts experience as the space shuttle orbits Earth. And the lifting sensation the students felt as the coaster plummeted down its famous first hill is called free fall. The Millennium Force is a 310-foot-tall roller coaster at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. The ride plummeted 310 feet at 93 miles per hour, and their bodies rose unwillingly from their seats. Students Experience the Physics of Spaceflight at Amusement ParkĪs Millennium Force crested the peak of its first hill, 20 students took a deep breath and braced for a high-speed plunge toward the earth.
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