On a roller coaster where is the potential energy the greatest

At the bottom of the tallest hill. At the top of the tallest hill. As it is climbing up the tallest hill. Kinetic energy never changes. Why does the roller coaster car have the greatest amount of potential energy at position A? The car is at the greatest height at position A. The car is moving with the greatest velocity at position A. The car has the greatest mass at position A. The car has the greatest acceleration at position A. Which of the following is an example of potential energy?

A glass jar sitting on a shelf. A flag waving in the wind. A ball rolling along a sidewalk. A battery powering a radio. Which is an example of potential energy being changed into kinetic energy? Which situation illustrates the concept of potential energy? They are directly proportional. There is no relationship. They are indirectly proportional.

They are brother and sister. Jose is stretching a rubber band so that it is tight. Before he lets the rubber band fly, the rubber band has:. None of these types of Energy. At which point is potential energy greatest? What kind of energy is in a rock at the edge of a cliff? Both potential and kinetic energy. Which is the best example that something has kinetic energy?

When a pendulum swings, at which point is kinetic energy highest? When a pendulum swings, at which point is potential energy at its greatest? Which is an example of potential energy? At the top of a loop there is more of this type of energy? On a roller coaster, where is maximum potential energy? At the bottom of a big hill. When going around a corner. When going upside down.

You might think that the roller coaster cars have engines inside them that push them along the track like automobiles. While that is true of a few roller coasters, most use gravity to move the cars along the track. Do any of you remember riding a roller coaster that started out with a big hill? If you looked closely at the roller coaster track on which the cars move , you would see in the middle of the track on that first hill, a chain. You might have even have felt it "catch" to the cars.

That chain hooks to the bottom of the cars and pulls them to the top of that first hill, which is always the highest point on a roller coaster.

Once the cars are at the top of that hill, they are released from the chain and coast through the rest of the track, which is where the name roller coaster comes from. Figure 1. Example setup for quick lesson demo.

What do you think would happen if a roller coaster had a hill in the middle of the track that was taller than the first hill of the roller coaster? Would the cars be able to make it up this bigger hill using just gravity? Conduct a short demonstration to prove the point. Take a piece of foam pipe insulation cut in half lengthwise and shape it into a roller coaster by taping it to classroom objects such as a desktop and a textbook, as shown in Figure 1.

Then, using marbles to represent the cars, show students that the first hill of a roller coaster must be the tallest point or the cars will not reach the end of the track.

Refer to the Building Roller Coasters activity for additional instructions. Next, play off other students' roller coaster experiences to move the lesson forward, covering the material provided in the Lesson Background and Vocabulary sections.

For example, talk about the point in the roller coaster where you travel the fastest, how cars make it through loops and corkscrews, and what causes passengers to feel weightless or very heavy at certain points in the roller coaster. The order in which you teach these points, and possibly more, is not critical to the lesson.

Also, it may be more engaging for the students to ask questions based on their experiences with roller coasters and let those questions lead the lesson from one point to the next. All of these points can be demonstrated using the foam tubing and marbles, so use them often to illustrate the lesson concepts.

The underlying principle of all roller coasters is the law of conservation of energy, which describes how energy can neither be lost nor created; energy is only transferred from one form to another. In roller coasters, the two forms of energy that are most important are gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy. Gravitational potential energy is greatest at the highest point of a roller coaster and least at the lowest point.

Kinetic energy is greatest at the lowest point of a roller coaster and least at the highest point. Potential and kinetic energy can be exchanged for one another, so at certain points the cars of a roller coaster may have just potential energy at the top of the first hill , just kinetic energy at the lowest point or some combination of kinetic and potential energy at all other points.

The first hill of a roller coaster is always the highest point of the roller coaster because friction and drag immediately begin robbing the car of energy. At the top of the first hill, a car's energy is almost entirely gravitational potential energy because its velocity is zero or almost zero.

This is the maximum energy that the car will ever have during the ride. That energy can become kinetic energy which it does at the bottom of this hill when the car is moving fast or a combination of potential and kinetic energy like at the tops of smaller hills , but the total energy of the car cannot be more than it was at the top of the first hill.

If a taller hill were placed in the middle of the roller coaster, it would represent more gravitational potential energy than the first hill, so a car would not be able to ascend to the top of the taller hill. Cars in roller coasters always move the fastest at the bottoms of hills. This is related to the first concept in that at the bottom of hills all of the potential energy has been converted to kinetic energy, which means more speed.

Likewise, cars always move the slowest at their highest point, which is the top of the first hill. A web-based simulation demonstrating the relationship between vertical position and the speed of a car in a roller coaster various shapes is provided at the MyPhysicsLab Roller Coaster Physics Simulation.

This website provides numerical data for simulated roller coaster of various shapes. Friction exists in all roller coasters, and it takes away from the useful energy provided by roller coaster. Friction is caused in roller coasters by the rubbing of the car wheels on the track and by the rubbing of air and sometimes water! Friction turns the useful energy of the roller coaster gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy into heat energy, which serves no purpose associated with propelling cars along the track.

Friction is the reason roller coasters cannot go on forever, so minimizing friction is one of the biggest challenges for roller coaster engineers. Friction is also the reason that roller coasters can never regain their maximum height after the initial hill unless a second chain lift is incorporated somewhere on the track.

Potential energy - the energy of vertical position - is dependent upon the mass of the object and the height of the object. The car's large quantity of potential energy is due to the fact that they are elevated to a large height above the ground. As the cars descend the first drop they lose much of this potential energy in accord with their loss of height. The cars subsequently gain kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy - the energy of motion - is dependent upon the mass of the object and the speed of the object. The train of coaster cars speeds up as they lose height. Thus, their original potential energy due to their large height is transformed into kinetic energy revealed by their high speeds.

As the ride continues, the train of cars are continuously losing and gaining height. Each gain in height corresponds to the loss of speed as kinetic energy due to speed is transformed into potential energy due to height. Each loss in height corresponds to a gain of speed as potential energy due to height is transformed into kinetic energy due to speed.