What Are The Physics Of Roller Coasters

Roller coaster are driven almost entirely by basic inertial, gravitational, and centripetal forces. Newton’s 1st law of motion states that an object in motion will remain in motion in a straight line except when acted by an outside force Inertia states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object moving at constant velocity will remain at constant velocity unless acted upon an outside unbalanced force. Gravity is basically saying what goes up must come back down and as you see in a roller coaster it does not keep going up it comes back down gravity acts upon it. The first hill has the largest amount of gravitational potential energy. When a roller coaster is at the bottom of the first hill, the kinetic energy is at it’s biggest. By