2 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 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS USING THE WORKBOOK FOR TEACHERS 4 USING THE WORKBOOK FOR STUDENTS 5 SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS 6 RIDE SPECIFICATIONS 7 FUN STUFF ABOUT RIDES! 8 HOW SHALL WE TRAVEL? 11 INVENTING THE IDEAL RIDE 12 IN ONE TURN 13 PULSE RATE AND PURE RIDING ENJOYMENT 14 PULSE RATE WORKSHEET 15 HEALTH AND SAFETY 16 HEAR YE! HEAR YE! 17 SIGN, SIGN, EVERYWHERE A SIGN! 18 WHERE DID THE TIME GO? 19 WHERE DID THE TIME GO? WORKSHEET 20 GIVE ME DIRECTIONS 21 4 USING THE WORKBOOK FOR TEACHERS We are happy to provide you with a guide to E. You may want to give your students the option interesting experiments and projects to enhance to choose a ride that’s not covered in the your “Education in Motion” trip to Kentucky workbook and to show how that ride could be Kingdom. Use as many as you deem suitable for used to illustrate physics concepts. your students and of course, feel free to alter them to fit your students’ needs. F. When checking your students’ answers, remember that all entries are based on actual A. The intent of this workbook is to show students student measurements and observations. that learning about science and math at a Human reaction times vary and ride speeds theme park adds an extra dimension - going on depend to some extent on the ambient rides becomes more interesting and exciting! temperature and time of day. B. You may want to do a sample page from the G. Many teachers have found it useful to request workbook in class, using made-up data, a day that their students turn in the workbook at the or so before your field trip. Students will have end of the day. This ensures that enough a chance to get familiar with the workbook and calculations are done at the park for the get a sense of how to use the pages most students to connect those calculated results efficiently. with the rides they have just experienced. C. Choose a series of concepts and a minimum number (3 or 4) of rides you would like students to investigate. Since the time spent standing in line is directly proportional to the popularity of a ride, suggest to your students that they plan to use less dramatic rides for a good portion of their required work. D. Assign students to lab groups of six to ten and request that each group be able to account for its members at all times. In a larger group like this, no one will feel pressured to ride, anyone wanting to ride will likely have a partner to ride with, and non-riders will be able to ask the others how they liked the ride. You’ll also need less equipment. 5 USING THE WORKBOOK FOR STUDENTS GETTING READY! Before your visit to Kentucky Kingdom, you may 7. Your teacher will give you your admission need to collect materials and equipment and bring ticket. We recommend that everyone in them with you to the park. Some of the activities your group gather at a specific place require that lab or vocabulary work be done at (suggest the fountain at the entrance) school before you come to the park. Completing before leaving the park. Great opportunity to these tasks before your trip will allow you to make take a class photo! better use of your time at Kentucky Kingdom and should add to your enjoyment of the day. 8. Check with your teacher about lunch arrangements. 9. Make sure you understand the REMEMBER: arrangements for returning home before you 1. You are going to Kentucky Kingdom to get off your bus to enter the park. Make sure demonstrate your understanding of math, you can recognize your bus! physics, and science by gathering data and applying basic concepts to different rides and situations. 2. You will need to record the data you collect. EQUIPMENT YOU MAY NEED TO You are expected to explain your answers. BRING TO THE PARK: If you feel a question may have more than Calculator. one meaning, state your interpretation of the question and then answer it. Stopwatch. There are many inexpensive 3. You are expected to obey all park rules and ones available and often students have a any directions given by the park’s staff. Do watch with a stopwatch mode. Accuracy to not endanger your safety or that of others. one-tenth of a second is sufficient. 4. Objects dropped from rides can hurt people. Pens and pencils. You are not allowed to bring loose objects, Colored pencils, crayons, or markers. such as sunglasses, cell phones, cameras, Yardstick or measuring tape. etc., on the rides. Paper (plain, graph, and/or drawing). 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 ride, write down the information you gather, and don’t lose it! 6 SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS To name and describe your observations, you Kinetic Energy - The energy of motion. The faster you go, the must be able to speak the language of physics. more kinetic energy you have. An object cannot speed up unless it gets energy from something that pushes or pulls it Try to use each of these words at least twice while through some distance. Roller coasters get kinetic energy from gravitational potential energy. riding or watching the rides. A moving object cannot slow down unless its kinetic energy is Acceleration - How fast speed and/or direction change. changed into some other kind of energy. In roller coasters, Action Force - One of the pair of forces described in Newton’s kinetic energy changes into gravitational potential energy and third law. into heat. The total of the kinetic energy and gravitational Air Resistance - Force of air pushing against a moving object. potential energy in a coaster tends to remain the same. Brakes Apparent Weightlessness - The feeling of weightlessness change kinetic energy into heat. that one has when falling toward the earth. (True Law of Conservation of Energy - The statement that energy weightlessness, however, requires that an object be far out in cannot be created or destroyed; it may be transformed from space, where gravitational forces are negligible.) one form to another, but the total amount of energy never Centripetal Force - A push or pull that makes an object move changes. in a curved path. Its direction is toward the center of the object’s Mass - A kind of moving inertia that tends to keep moving curved path. objects going in the same direction. Momentum is the mass of Elapsed Time - The time that has passed, or elapsed, since a body multiplied by its velocity. Momentum (mass x velocity) the beginning of the time measurement. tends to remain the same. Elastic Collision - A collision in which colliding objects Momentum - The product of the mass and the velocity of an rebound without lasting deformation or the generation of heat. object. Has direction as well as size. Energy - The property of an object or system that enables it to Parabola - The shape of the curved path of a ball as it is tossed do work; measured in joules. from one person to another. Roller coaster hills have this Equilibrium - A state of balance between opposing forces or shape. effects. Potential Energy - Energy that is stored and held in readiness Force - Any sort of push or pull. by an object by virtue of its position. With its energy in this Free Fall - Motion under the influence of the gravitational force stored state, it has the potential for doing work. only. Power - The rate at which work is done, which equals the Friction - A force from surrounding material that pushes or amount of work done divided by the amount of time during pulls on objects when you try to move them. Friction causes which the work is done. This is measured in watts. roller coasters to slow down. Friction usually results from the Reaction Force - The force that is equal in strength and rubbing of one surface against another and produces heat as opposite in direction to the action force and that acts on a result. Air resistance is one kind of friction. whatever is exerting the action force. Gravitational Potential Energy - The amount of energy of an Revolutions - Motion in which an object turns about an axis object in a position above the surface of the earth.