Sidewinder11




 * Evan Hiester**

The Sidewinder is one of the steel roller coasters that can be found in Hershey Park. The Sidewinder was built in 1991 in the Pioneer Frontier section of the park. This roller coaster was built by Vekoma, a roller coaster manufacturing company, and was the first roller coaster to be built in Hershey Park since the Sooper Dooper Looper in 1977. This coaster is a Boomerang coaster, which is a roller coaster who's cars get pulled backwards up a hill and then shot down the hill to start the ride. Then, when the cars reach the hill on the other side of the ride, the cars get shot down the hill and go through the whole ride backwards until the cars reach the station. This ride is 875 feet long, the cars has a height of 105 feet at the top of the beginning and ending hills, has 6 loops (3 up and 3 back), can reach up to 47mph, has a maximum G force of 5.2G's, and lasts for about 1 minute and 45 seconds (values found at Hershey Parks website). The cars for the ride also have a mass of 8260kg (as determined by Tanner Landis' previous wiki).

List of values in 'physics terms': -Length of ride: 266.7m -Max height of cars: 32m -Duration of Ride: 1:45s -Mass of Cars: 8260kg

-Max. Velocity: 21.011m/s -G Force: 5.2G's



In order to verify the values that were given by the website, I am going to use different equations to calculated the values and then find the percent error of those calculations.

To find the maximum velocity, I had to use the Conservation of Energy equations: PEi + KEi = PEf + KEf PEi = KEf mgh = 1/2mv^2 gh = 1/2v^2 (9.8)(32) = (1/2)(v^2) 627.2 = v^2 v = 25.044m/s
 * VELOCITY**:

%Error: 25.044-21.011 = 4.033/25.044 = 0.161*100 = 16.1%Error. The percent error is a bit high due to the fact that the maximum height of the cars from the ground is 32m, but at the bottom of the hill, the cars are not at ground level. They are still a few meters off the ground, causing the height to be less than 32m. If the height is lowered and then used in the equations, the final velocity will decrease along with the %Error.

G force = max. Y acceleration/9.8 max. Y acceleration = 44.13m/s^2 44.13/9.8 = 4.503G's
 * G FORCE**:

%Error: 5.2 - 4.503 = 0.697/5.2 = 0.133*100 = 13.3%Error

X-Acceleration Vs. Time Graph:

Y-Acceleration Vs. Time Graph: