Ride Info Help

I'm in the middle of creating an online lesson for my students calculating various physical quantities using Cedar Point rides. I was in need of some obscure information and hoping someone on the site knew any of it. Here's what I need:

Millennium: speed over and radius of curvature of first airtime hill

Top Thrill: length of launch section, weight of empty train, radius of curvature of pull-out

Corkscrew: height of vertical loop

MaxAir: angular velocity, diameter of frisbee

CP&LE: time to complete one cycle, time waiting at each station, maximum speed

Snake River Falls: distance it takes the boat to slow, weight of empty boat

Any information that you can provide would be of great help. Thanks in advance.

Those are some tough questions to answer even for us diehard fans. I'd like to know some myself:)
I might not be able to answer much of your questions, but I hope this is some help.

TTD- length of launch= I think its around 315ft.
trains=6.31 tons

maXai-diameter of frisbee=8 metres

Sorry but thats about all I can think of. If I were you, I'd try emailing Monty Jasper. I've asked him a few times about technical issues(mostly about Dragster). Though it's tough to say just how much of each coasters designs he knows.

I have to say there are some stuff that I can't come up with and I'm good with that kind of info. Here are the ones that I do know:

CP&LP: I know it takes roughly around 2 1/2 to 3 min to make one complete revolution depending on the speed and how many people are on it.

maXair: When you mean angular velocity, is it the max angle it swings at. If it is, then it is around 190-200 depend on weight and speed again.

That is all I can come up with, sorry!

I believe CP Marketing has information packets for school instructors. You might check with them.

I think it is awesome that you are taking the time to make your classes more interesting. So many of the teachers I had just gaves us the generic problems from the text books. Specific cases like cedar point rides where you can actually go and see and feel the forces working has got to make physics a lot more interesting. Good luck on finding the infomation.

Regarding the curvatures...

I would venture to guess that Millennium Force's turns and hills are compound curves, specifically parabolic. As you may know (being a teacher), you'll instead be looking for the positions of the Linea Directrix and focus, not the radius and focus. Each point on a parabola is equidistant to both the directrix and focus as opposed to simply being equidistant to the focus in relation to every other point along the curve. If you know both locations (directrix and focus) you can precisely map out the parabolic curve.

Whether parabolic, hyperbolic, circular, eliptical or even a perfectly straight incline, you will have negative acceleration while going up and the opposite on the downside. Consequently, speed will not be constant.

***Ok technically, one could create a curve that perfectly negates the acceleration from gravity and friction to achieve a constant speed***

Top Thrill Dragster is likely the same but much less noticeable since you only a segment of each curve.

Here is some info on a typical "Giant Frisbee" a.k.a. maXair. http://www.hussrides.com/32cGiantFrisbeeTech.htm

You might check out this page, it has a little bit of info for Physics Day. It includes a link to Ride Man's article about the physics of Maxair.

http://groups.cedarpoint.com/public/studentyouth/mathphysics/index.cfm

*** Edited 11/13/2006 10:07:42 PM UTC by Ralph Wiggum***

CP&LE R.R.-

One round takes between 15 and 20 minutes, dependent on track conditions and Platform crew.
Station stops shouldn't be more then 4 minutes, but usually end up about 5-6 minutes long.

Hope that helps!~ :)