Inspiration/Thinking Process

At first, when I heard of “energy conversion toy,” I thought that I would like to make a toy that kids in my cousin’s age(9) would enjoy, and easily give them an idea of what energy conversion is. So while thinking about the simplest and most common energy conversion, I thought of a roller coaster. However, since it is impossible to actually make a roller coaster, I came up with a marble rollercoaster that replaced people and trains with marbles. However, that alone does not seem to be enough to attract the attention of a child who has already started attending elementary school, and the volume seems too large. I adopted a method of attaching a road to and showing the process of going down. Also, since I had a very strange experience seeing a silver metal Newton cradle at that age, I decided to put a watermill and a silver metal Newton cradle that perform the same type of energy conversion as part of a roller coaster to attract attention as a more diverse structure.

Design Concept

Design Steps

materials: cardboard(a lot), glue gun, strings (at least 30cm), three 2cm diameter metal balls, one 1.5cm diameter metal ball, one 1.5cm diameter glass bead

  1. cut out big cardboard that would be the support for the rollercoaster rails.
  2. on the cardboard, according to the planner (prototype) draw the location that indicates what parts would go where.
  3. Cut the bottom part of the rail, which is directly attached to the wall, to length. At this time, since the diameter of the bead is 1.5 cm, the thickness of the bottom was adjusted to 2 cm.
  4. take thick wood sticks and stick them at the center of the watermills.
  5. cut out parts of the watermills (cardboard). make sure the hole in the middle of the mill has enough space to put the sticks through them.
  6. stick strings with metal balls, and then stick them with the roof in line
  7. fold the bottom part of the big cardboard(supporter) and create space for the marbles to gather at last

Success criteria:

  • marbles do not fall off the rollercoaster rail before it reaches the goal
  • once they reach the goal, they stay in the container (not easy to lose the marbles)
  • second marble should be triggered by newton’s cardle
  • watermills should spin when contact with marbles
  • marbles should not stop
  • demonstrate potential energy -> kinetic energy(intended energy transformation), vibration energy, and heat energy