One of the great things about blogging is that almost everyday someone contacts me with a website or a service that they want me to look at. On Tuesday, I shared a post about Amusement Park Physics and not long after that post went live I got an email about Coaster Creator.

Coaster Creator is an interactive lesson about potential and kinetic energy. Coaster Creator provides a audio/ visual tutorial in which students learn about the physics behind roller coasters. After completing the tutorial, students can design and test their own roller coasters. If the roller coaster is designed improperly it will either crash or stall out.

One of the things that differentiates Coaster Creator from Amusement Park Physics is the audio component of Coaster Creator’s tutorials which is something not offered on Amusement Park Physics. If you don’t have enough computers for your students, Coaster Creator’s tutorials can also be downloaded and printed as PDFs.

Applications for Education
Coaster Creator could be a fun way for students to explore the concepts of potential and kinetic energy in an application that they could experience at an amusement park.