Roller Coaster Science!

The fifth grade students did a STEM project on force and motion. The students had to design a roller coaster out of paper towels, toilet paper rolls and duct tape. They worked in a group of 4 and each student had a certain job that had to be done before they could actually start being engineers. They had to research the top 10 fastest, tallest, longest, and most expensive roller coasters in the world. Then they had to discuss what type of roller coaster they would be building from their research. They were given 4 days to complete their task.They had to build and rebuild and test their roller coaster each time in order to make improvements. In the end, we had the final day of completion and each class raced their marble down three times, and then had to find the average of their time. The students really seemed to enjoy this project, and learned a lot about force and motion.