Why is the First Hill of a Roller Coaster Always the Highest?

This week we continued our study of roller coasters as we solved the mystery, “Why is the first hill of a roller coaster always the highest?”  Your child learned about how the first hill gives the coaster the energy it needs to go through the whole track.  Since hills can’t give enough energy to climb a higher hill, the first hill has to be the tallest.  

The same idea applies to swinging at the playground.  You can support this week’s learning by taking your child to the park, pulling them back on the swing and letting them go.  Before you release, you can ask your child, “will you swing back and crash into me if I stand still?  why not?”  Then try adding energy by pushing your child and talk about what happens.  Have fun!

After creating a roller coaster track with hills, we then decided that we just had to have one with a loop. After some trial and error, we were able to get the marble through our loop. We needed a very high first hill to get this to work and realized that we needed to start the marble almost at the ceiling!