Ramps and Rollers

Cultivate Your Inner Engineer

How long a track can you create that will let a ball roll continuously down? What happens when you add middle ramps and then vary their height? The ball that you’re holding in your hand, before it’s even rolling, contains stored energy due to its height above the ground, which is called potential energy. When you release it to run down a track, it starts to convert its potential energy into motion energy, called kinetic energy.

Ramps and Rollers is also designed to let our youngest visitors explore physical science and engineering. So encourage your own young engineer to create pathways and vertical drops using ramps, and then to test their design using small balls and the force of gravity. Can she design a different pathway so the ball rolls farther? Or how can he create a design to slow the ball or speed it up?