Great America

Thornridge High School

Great America Physics Day 2008

Mr. Sievers, Ms. Arrowwood, and Ms. Golin took 39 physics students at Thornridge to Great America on May 3rd. Students had fun and experienced physics first hand. The most notable concept they experienced was when several students actually “felt” their normal force go to ZERO when they went over the hills on the Ragin Bull. Some concepts the discovered and talked about were conservation of energy (yikes), centripetal acceleration (a lot), freefall (wow), impulse (ouch), kinematics (yahoo), forces (a lot of them), angular momentum ( the teacups) and conservation of momentum (thanks to the bumper cars). The students had an awesome time, will long remember this trip, all returned safely, their behavior was commendable, and they were able to relate classroom concepts to the rides at Great America. A big thanks to Dr. Buckner and Ms. Lacey for their help with transportation and ticket costs.