Roller Coaster Energy Experiment

The purpose of this experiment was to observe how the law of conservation of energy applies to a roller coaster system. In doing this we were able to determine the velocity of the cart as a function of its height upon the roller coaster, find the kinetic and potential energy for each trial of the cart and conclude energy loss due to friction. The results from part one concluded that as the roller coaster cart went down a hill the potential energy was converted into kinetic energy that resulted in an increase of speed. When the cart was at its highest peak it had the lowest velocity, but at its lowest point it in turn had the highest velocity. The results from part one also showed that the value for g varies only slightly for different masses. …show more content…
The reason that the carts go around the same speeds regardless of the mass is due to Newton’s second law. The law says that all objects will have the same acceleration due to downward gravity acting upon the object, no matter the mass of the object. As the cart is going down the hill or up it, gravity is acting on it and acceleration remains the same for different masses. Obtaining the velocity, for each trial in part one, from Newton’s law would be hard because we do not know the exact degree of the force being applied to the carts. In order to derive the acceleration from Newton’s second law, we would have to have the mass of the cart and the force acting on the object. We would have to find the force first before we can apply Newton’s second law in order to find the acceleration of the cart. The results from part two show that the mass slightly affects the kinetic energy, and more drastically affects the gravitational potential energy. This is observed because the gravitational energy of an object depends on its mass and its height. The velocity and the mass affect the amount of kinetic energy the cart has, so when the mass of the cart changes and the velocity changes, this can account for a change in