VENTURA : Physics Class Makes Its Own Ups and Downs

Since last fall, Ventura High School teacher Louise Komp had planned to take her ninth-grade physics class to Magic Mountain amusement park at the end of the school year.

The plan was for the students to apply what they had learned during the year by testing the velocity, momentum and acceleration of the roller coasters they would ride.

But Komp had to take time off work this spring because of illness, forcing her to cancel the class trip.

So the ninth-graders built their own amusement park rides.

Made of newspaper rolled into chutes and tubes stuck together with glue, tape and paste, the model rides, which students brought to class Tuesday, ranged up to about 5 feet high and several feet long.

Although many students regretted they were not able to go to Magic Mountain, some said that building the model rides had certain advantages.

“We were all kind of disappointed that we didn’t get to go,” 15-year-old Nathan Ashby said. “But this was fun. You could make your own ride. If you didn’t like the loop, you could make it smaller.”

Nathan was one of four boys who built a model called the Dino Rider. Like all of the projects, the Dino Rider had a prehistoric theme fitting for a “Jurassic Park”-type amusement park.

Each model was required to include tubes or chutes that made a full loop, at least four turns and a four-inch drop.

The Dino Rider, for example, had a “stomach-swallowing loop, a heart-stomach drop, four neck-wrenching banked turns and one amazing, spine-crush launch ramp,” its creators said in their written report.

But hyping the rides was not enough.

As 15-year-old Joey Hays, a co-creator of Dino Rider, said: “It’s supposed to work.”

The test for each of the rides was whether a tiny plastic ball or model car could move through the twists and turns without falling off or getting stuck.

Because the assignment was to build models that worked, the project was a fitting end to the yearlong physics course, Komp said.

While most high school physics classes emphasize using pencil and paper to test mathematical formulas, Ventura High’s ninth-grade conceptual physics class teaches the principles of physics through discussion and application.