All Levels Workbook
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THE THRILL SEEKER’S GUIDE TO EDUCATION If you’ve been searching for the fastest, the biggest, and the most enlightening educational experience around, your quest is over! Kentucky Kingdom provides a unique outdoor environment for multidisciplinary educational programs. “Educational?” you ask. How can a theme park replace the classroom? As you loop through the air on T3 or gallop around on the Bella Musica Carousel, you should start to see the patterns. Whether in park operations, the color schemes used, the selection of rides, the location of walkways, and in so many other areas, specific patterns have been developed and used. You and your students will be experiencing those patterns but now, fasten your seatbelt and get ready for an exhilarating “ride” through Kentucky Kingdom. Acknowledgments: Kentucky Kingdom wishes to thank the dedicated teachers and staff of Jefferson County Public Schools who have contributed to our Education in Motion program. Special thanks to Lee Ann Nickerson, Alexis Rich, Dotty Turnbull, and Kristen Wingfeld. © Kentucky Kingdom, LLLP 2016 ALL LEVELS ALL LEVELS USING THE WORKBOOK FOR TEACHERS We are happy to provide you with a guide D. Assign students to lab groups of to interesting experiments and projects to six to ten and request that each group enhance your “Education in Motion” trip be able to account for its members at to Kentucky Kingdom. Use as many as all times. In a larger group like this, no you deem suitable for your students and one will feel pressured to ride, anyone of course, feel free to alter them to fit your wanting to ride will likely have a students’ needs. partner to ride with, and non-riders will be able to ask the others how they A. The intent of this workbook is to liked the ride. You’ll also need less show students that learning about equipment. science and math at a theme park adds an extra dimension - going on E. You may want to give your rides becomes more interesting and students the option to choose a ride exciting! that’s not covered in the workbook and to show how that ride could be B. You may want to do a sample used to illustrate physics concepts. page from the workbook in class, using made-up data, a day or so F. When checking your students’ before your field trip. Students will answers, remember that all entries have a chance to get familiar with the are based on actual student workbook and get a sense of how to measurements and observations. use the pages most efficiently. Human reaction times vary and ride speeds depend to some extent on the C. Choose a series of concepts and ambient temperature and time of day. a minimum number (3 or 4) of rides you would like students to investigate. G. Many teachers have found it Since the time spent standing in line useful to request that their students is directly proportional to the turn in the workbook at the end of the popularity of a ride, suggest to your day. This ensures that enough students that they plan to use less calculations are done at the park for dramatic rides for a good portion of the students to connect those their required work. calculated results with the rides they have just experienced. ALL LEVELS USING THE WORKBOOK FOR STUDENTS GETTING READY! ride, write down the information you gather, Before your visit to Kentucky Kingdom, you may and don’t lose it! need to collect materials and equipment and bring them with you to the park. Some of the 7. Your teacher will give you your admission activities require that lab or vocabulary work be ticket. We recommend that everyone in your done at school before you come to the park. group gather at a specific place (suggest the Completing these tasks before your trip will allow fountain at the entrance) before leaving the you to make better use of your time at Kentucky park. Great opportunity to take a class photo! Kingdom and should add to your enjoyment of 8. Check with your teacher about lunch the day. arrangements. 9. Make sure you understand the arrangements REMEMBER: for returning home before you get off your bus to enter the park. Make sure you can 1. You are going to Kentucky Kingdom to recognize your bus! demonstrate your understanding of math, physics, and science by gathering data and EQUIPMENT YOU MAY NEED TO applying basic concepts to different rides and BRING TO THE PARK: situations. 2. You will need to record the data you collect. Calculator. You are expected to explain your answers. If Stopwatch. There are many inexpensive you feel a question may have more than one ones available and often students have a meaning, state your interpretation of the watch with a stopwatch mode. Accuracy to question and then answer it. one-tenth of a second is sufficient. 3. You are expected to obey all park rules and Pens and pencils. any directions given by the park’s staff. Do Colored pencils, crayons, or markers. not endanger your safety or that of others. Yardstick or measuring tape. 4. Objects dropped from rides can hurt people. Paper (plain, graph, and/or drawing). You are not allowed to bring loose objects, such as sunglasses, cell phones, cameras, etc., on the rides. 5. It is not required that you ride any of the rides. Yet we hope you will want to get some first-hand experience by riding at least some of them! 6. It’s a good idea to plan ahead! Review the list of any equipment or supplies you will need to bring with you to the park. Determine the data to be collected before going on the ALL LEVELS SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS Kinetic Energy - The energy of motion. The faster you go, the To name and describe your observations, you more kinetic energy you have. An object cannot speed up must be able to speak the language of physics. unless it gets energy from something that pushes or pulls it through some distance. Roller coasters get kinetic energy from gravitational potential energy. Try to use each of these words at least twice while riding or watching the rides. A moving object cannot slow down unless its kinetic energy is changed into some other kind of energy. In roller coasters, Acceleration - How fast speed and/or direction change. kinetic energy changes into gravitational potential energy and Action Force - One of the pair of forces described in Newton’s into heat. The total of the kinetic energy and gravitational third law. potential energy in a coaster tends to remain the same. Brakes change kinetic energy into heat. Air Resistance - Force of air pushing against a moving object. Law of Conservation of Energy - The statement that energy Apparent Weightlessness - The feeling of weightlessness cannot be created or destroyed; it may be transformed from that one has when falling toward the earth. (True one form to another, but the total amount of energy never weightlessness, however, requires that an object be far out in changes. space, where gravitational forces are negligible.) Mass - A kind of moving inertia that tends to keep moving Centripetal Force - A push or pull that makes an object move objects going in the same direction. Momentum is the mass of in a curved path. Its direction is toward the center of the object’s a body multiplied by its velocity. Momentum (mass x velocity) curved path. tends to remain the same. Elapsed Time - The time that has passed, or elapsed, since Momentum - The product of the mass and the velocity of an the beginning of the time measurement. object. Has direction as well as size. Elastic Collision - A collision in which colliding objects Parabola - The shape of the curved path of a ball as it is tossed rebound without lasting deformation or the generation of heat. from one person to another. Roller coaster hills have this Energy - The property of an object or system that enables it to shape. do work; measured in joules. Potential Energy - Energy that is stored and held in readiness Equilibrium - A state of balance between opposing forces or by an object by virtue of its position. With its energy in this effects. stored state, it has the potential for doing work. Force - Any sort of push or pull. Power - The rate at which work is done, which equals the Free Fall - Motion under the influence of the gravitational force amount of work done divided by the amount of time during only. which the work is done. This is measured in watts. Friction - A force from surrounding material that pushes or Reaction Force - The force that is equal in strength and pulls on objects when you try to move them. Friction causes opposite in direction to the action force and that acts on roller coasters to slow down. Friction usually results from the whatever is exerting the action force. rubbing of one surface against another and produces heat as Revolutions - Motion in which an object turns about an axis a result. Air resistance is one kind of friction. outside the object. Gravitational Potential Energy - The amount of energy of an Rotation - The spinning motion that occurs when an object object in a position above the surface of the earth. The higher moves about an axis that is located within the object. an object is, the greater the gravitational potential energy it has Rotational Speed - The number of rotations or revolutions per relative to the earth’s surface. unit of time, often measured per second or minute.