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It is more likely a student will walk on the moon than design a roller coaster, but don’t tell that to engineering students.
More than 500 first-year engineering students competed to construct model-scale roller coasters. The students were divided into teams, and the top team from each Engineering 183 section earned a spot in Wednesday’s competition.
The students had to construct an open-loop roller coaster with two 25-foot lengths of 1/4-inch flexible plastic tubing and a circuit board. Each coaster had to include loops, a bump and rise, a curve and a straight-away track. A large plastic marble was dropped onto the coaster and had to safely make it to the box at the end of the coaster.
Students were judged on the design and building of the quarter-long project, said John Merrill, director of First-Year Engineering.
Jeff Gramke, manager of facilities, engineering and construction for Kings Island, was one of the judges. While at Kings Island, he spent three years designing and constructing The Beast, a roller coaster that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
“It’s a good opportunity to see how engineering relates to real-life situations,” he said.
Gramke said when he was in school he used to build bridges and believes current students have an advantage because they are building roller coasters.
“You get to see physics, structural, gravity and momentum parts that relate to all engineering,” he said. “I hope they learn to enjoy engineering – it’s not just about hard math.”
One of the top teams, An Hoang, a freshman in mechanical engineering, Christine Roszkowski, a sophomore in aeronautical engineering and Trevor Morlan, a sophomore in chemical engineering, constructed “White Lightning.”
“The hardest part was to replicate the track each time and to get the track to hold the ball and not fly up,” Hoang said.
The team used detailed sketches to save time when rebuilding the coaster, which took about 35 minutes.
“The sensors rough up the track, so it slows the ball down and we don’t get as much velocity,” Roszkowski said.
Although the team did not place in the final competition, Hoang said he enjoyed the experience of constructing a roller coaster.
“(It was rewarding) watching it go through, watching it work and work successfully,” he said.
Freshmen Ross Krieg, Joe Bowes, Josh Epstein and Frank Dactyl constructed the winning coaster, G-Force.
“We didn’t expect to win at all,” Bowes said.
Amanda Dolasinski can be reached at [email protected].
