At NerdBeach we love the pioneering and do it yourself spirit, and we love to feature just such endeavors brought to life. In the past we have covered both of John Iver's homemade roller coasters, Blue Flash and Blue Flash Too, and now we have another homemade roller coaster to share.
Jeremy Reid always had the idea of building a roller coaster, but it wasn't until he took some college classes on Physics and Strength of Materials did he come to the conclusion that he could actually do it. Unfortunately, Jeremy found that the information available for building your own roller coaster to be lacking. But that didn't even slow him down.
The end result is a wooden roller coaster that runs for about 500 feet. The roller coaster end up costing around $10,000, and features a 16 foot drop that propels the riding speed to about 15 mph. But the real prize is an engineered testament to Do It Yourself'ers everywhere.
What Powers Roller Coaster Carts?
The cars on a typical roller coaster are not self-powered. Instead, a standard full circuit coaster is pulled up with a chain or cable along the lift hill to the first peak of the coaster track. The potential energy accumulated by the rise in height is transferred to kinetic energy as the cars race down the first downward slope. Kinetic energy is then converted back into potential energy as the train moves up again to the second peak. This hill is necessarily lower, as some mechanical energy is lost to friction.
source:wikipedia
