By: Mary Ann McGann, Warren Township Schools
Seventh graders in Mary Pat Brown’s Innovation and Design class at Warren Middle School recently were faced with a unique challenge… to save the failing amusement park in Warren by designing and building a roller coaster guaranteed to boost revenue by coaxing thrill seekers back to the park.
The amusement park, of course, is fictional. But the assignment is very real. Students worked in pairs to draw a plan to scale, using a requisition form to calculate the cost of their paper roller coaster’s framework and tracks.
Working within a “budget” of $35, (the cost of a column, for example, was 50 cents while each stretch of track was $1.00), the budding engineers were given certain construction and design criteria, then set free to figure out the right combination of fun and physics.
“We started here with straight red track to get the most kinetic energy possible,” said 7th grader Hunter Miller, as she and Kaitlyn Loia presented their coaster to the class on Jan. 8.
According to “A Framework for K-12 Science Education,” the foundation for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which New Jersey plans to officially implement next September in grades 6-12 and in grades K-5 the following year, “the practices of engineering have much in common with the practices of science, although engineering design has a different purpose and product than scientific inquiry.”
Each of Brown’s 7th grade teams took a turn demonstrating their roller coaster while classmates listened and critiqued, providing positive feedback on ways to improve upon the design.
“The 7th Grade Paper Roller Coaster project is new curriculum that I developed and piloted during the 3rd (elective) cycle. The project was designed to challenge students as they used the Engineering Design Process,” says Brown, about the series of steps engineers take to come up with a solution to a problem.
(above) Warren Middle School 7th graders Hunter Miller (L) and Kaitlyn Loia use a marble to test their paper roller coaster.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mary Ann McGann
