SMART FUN in MIRABILANDIA ( )

SMART FUN in MIRABILANDIA
Report by: Ms. Giada Almici - Ms. Martina Sigalini
This is a summary of activities made by a group of italian students on April the 18th: our class is
2^B of IISS “ CAMILLO GOLGI “ in Brescia, Italy. Our team (22 students) has gone to an italian
amusement park located in Savio, near Ravenna. We should get a data collection regarding
acceleration on two rides, Discovery Tower and iSpeed Roller Coaster, but a few days before
our visit the direction of the Park didn’t allowed us to go up with smartphones on coaster. Sparkvue (iOS device) and Physics Toolbox Roller Coaster (Android device) software installed
on our smartphones have been used to measure acceleration, Excel spreadsheet for analysis.
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DISCOVERY TOWER
The ride consists of a turbo drop tower whose height is 52 meters above sea level. It launches
its riders up and downwards with a power greater than normal gravity.
Here following some pictures of us before the experiment. We put our phone in the housing arm
and began recording data before closing safety handle. The cart has been raised almost at a
constant speed
up to the top of
ride, then was
accelerated
downward and
finally jumps up and down many times.
We attached 8 csv or txt files showing the properties of
motion described above: unfortunately 3 are corrupted
and we found a failure of Vieyra software barometer
(i.e. Physics Toolbox), as you can see in the chart
shown on the next page (i.e. Figure 1); consider that we
converted pressure in altitude Δh with the following
formula (p in hPa): " Δh = 8, 33⋅ ( pmax − pmin )
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SMART FUN in MIRABILANDIA
Report by: Ms. Giada Almici - Ms. Martina Sigalini
downwards
upwards
However (g-t) plot above shows quite clearly (Figure 2):
A) The arrival on top of the tower.
B) The downwards motion, during which apparent weight decreases: what a great emotion
feeling lighter. As explained by our teacher the accelerometer measures the apparent weight,
that is the elastic reaction to the gravitational. So, calling a the acceleration of the cart we have:
" ay = g − a
C) Upwards acceleration of ride: inertia forces applied to sismic mass of sensor evolve that is
recorded in addition to the weight, making us feel heavier: so " ay = g + a .