Youths get hands-on experience — plus fun

By Tammy Walquist
Deseret Morning News

Jacob Moss, 13, discovered it takes a formula involving friction, acceleration and centrifugal force, along with the mass of the car, to successfully build a roller coaster.

It took the Layton Junior High student two days to build a model of his coaster, Ultimate Z Force.

"I learned that you need acceleration to get all the way through, and friction makes it stop so you need more power to stop," he said.

Moss was one of the estimated 6,600 high school and junior high students from Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming who turned Lagoon into a hands-on laboratory Friday during the park's 17th annual Utah State University Physics Day.

The main point of the activity is to increase interest in physics and give students hands-on experience, said event organizer JR Dennison of the USU Physics Department.

"We want to get students excited and interested in science and technology," he said.

Students could participate in six different contests, from designing the logo for next year's Physics Day T-shirts to building a model roller coaster to reading the G-forces at different points on the Colossus Fire Dragon.

In the later afternoon student teams participated in a Physics Bowl. Members of both the first- and second-place teams received four-year, full-ride scholarships to USU amounting to around $120,000, Dennison said. In addition, USU also gave out thousands of dollars more in prizes from sponsors and Lagoon.

Jantzsen Stallings, 14, of West Lake Junior High in West Valley City, summed up what many students felt as they attempted the Sky Drop.

"Dang it! I missed," he said.

Students participating in the Sky Drop rode across the park on the Sky Ride to drop a container with an egg inside to the ground in hopes of hitting a target and keeping their egg from breaking.

Kirstin Nielsen, 13, and Kelsey Hunziker, 14, spent two days making a Styrofoam ball they purchased from a craft store into an insulated egg container. They cut strips of foam to put around the ball, padded the inside area where the egg would sit with cotton balls and used two bungee cords to hold the top on.

Jessica Rocha, left, and Shelese Sheffield, Kaysville Junior High eighth-graders, build a roller coaster at Physics Day at Lagoon. Laura Seitz, Deseret Morning News

"I thought it was going to break," Nielsen said. She was overjoyed to discover it didn't. "I learned to drop if after passing the target because it goes behind you."

Across the park from the Sky Drop, Courtney Turnbow, 17, of Westside High School in Dayton, Idaho, rode on the Colossus Fire Dragon three times to try to get a reading on her hand-held accelerometer to measure different points of G-force on the coaster.

"It's interesting to find out where it's the most (because) it's in different places," she said.

Turnbow's teammate, Emily Porter, 18, said the activity taught her how much gravity can change in a short space of time.

"Gravity changes with the speed and momentum you have," she said.

Physics Bowl winners included: First place, Layton High School team of Jordan Dahl, Cory Kelley and John Hofer; second, Cyprus High School, Dan Shallbetter, Taylor Duckett, Sam Caldwell; third, Hillcrest High School, Brett Bostrom; Mark Glade, Garrett Green; fourth, Lone Peak High School, Nathan Fox, Tyler Ockwig, Mike Brodie.

Tammy Walquist