January 30, 2023 //  by Brittney Hallmark

Many students love to build and make functional things with their hands. A great way to bring STEM and STEAM activities into your home, classroom, or distance learning, is to be sure to include hands-on activities! Help students learn more about kinetic energy vs potential energy. Students will enjoy designing and creating their own roller coaster tracks, as they can then experience their own version of an amusement park ride. These 10 activities will help you plan your roller coaster design fun so get reading to learn more! 

While this activity may take a lot of supervision in the building process, later there will be hours of experimenting and exploring by your little ones. They can go through the whole engineering design process by thinking through the design and how to build it. They will need your help with the hot glue. 

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This roller coaster model is a perfect marble run. As students learn about the science of roller coasters and begin to understand the different forms of energy (kinetic energy and potential energy), they will begin to put thought into their roller coaster design. This one is built from cardboard tubes and tape. 

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This would be a fun activity to do in teams. As learners use common materials, like foam pool noodles, they can also take other factors into consideration. They can then work together to test out the laws of motion to form the best roller coaster track. 

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This STEM challenge rocks because it’s full of students’ design ideas and concepts! Students must work together to try and create a roller coaster model to let a car or a marble run down the tracks. This investigative activity allows students the chance to test out physics concepts. 

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Break out the craft sticks, strips of paper, cardboard tubes, and any other materials that may be helpful. Let students use cardboard paper tubes as a basis for their primary resource and get creative with the rest of the architectural skills!

One way to achieve the goals you have in mind is to first devise a great plan. Let students sketch out their idea on a blank sheet of paper and then get busy creating! Provide plenty of classroom and construction materials so that there are many options for your little engineers to choose from. 

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This play-doh-themed roller coaster is great for adding tops of hills as beginning points. Students can use different resource types to make the hill taller and test it out to see how the marbles run down to the bottom. This is great for all grade levels. 

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Paper plates can be an amazing resource, especially with this fun project. This is a great class activity that will yield many different results although built with the same materials and a common goal. Students can determine where the potential energy and kinetic energy will work best with this activity. 

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This fun, team activity is completed using paper strips and scraps of paper. As students become coaster designers, they must consider how to form coaster features and build the best design. They may get creative with the construction by adding in some hills or loops. 

A totally different activity for roller coaster design that involves coding! Students will learn about the design of roller coasters and will learn how to code them into reality on their screens. This brilliant activity encompasses many skills and has its foundation in STEM. 

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