Magnets and Rollercoasters
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Magnets and Rollercoasters
Team Go
Download film (right-click)Award Nominees , Award Winners , Demonstration , Engineering , Explanation , Physics , Secondary
The insides of a magnetic rollercoaster.
Director's Notes:
A delightful collection of characteristics displayed by magnets, which are used within the internal mechanisms of the typical rollercoaster.
Here’s a nice ‘how to’ guide for the Gauss Cannon, and a video demonstration of using such a thing on a track, which inspired us to make this film.
SciCast Notes:
Winner: Best Engineering Film, 2008
Nominee: Technical and Artistic Achievement, 2008
I love this film. It’s quite complex, there’s lots to it, the ideas are great, and the model rollercoaster is indeed delightful. The team have done a terrific job bringing it all together.
My apologies to them for changing the photos at the end of the film — I couldn’t find any copyright information for the pictures they’d used, and they may not be receiving email from me, so I’ve tweaked the pictures to ones published under Creative Commons licenses.
One of the things I like about the film is that it raises all sorts of questions. For example:
- Do rollercoasters actually use this sort of technology, or are they mostly mechanical?
- Regenerative braking systems use magnetism to induce an electrical current. How does this differ from what’s shown in the film?
- Magnetic levitation trains use magnetic fields to lift — and in some cases power — the train. How closely-related to the film is this? It’s a good job there isn’t a SciCast Exam, I’d have a field day writing nasty questions.
— Jonathan.