Theme Park Challenge

How can you design a roller coaster that is exciting for guests and efficient for a theme park?

Students began the Theme Park Challenge by designing and building a roller coaster car within a set of constraints. Their design had to account for capacity, how many passengers could safely fit and ride at one time. Starting with the coaster car gave students a smaller design problem to solve before applying the same thinking to a larger system.

From there, students expanded their thinking from one coaster car to an entire roller coaster. They considered how long a ride would take, how many passengers could ride at once, and how those numbers affected the number of people the attraction could serve over time. Math became part of the design process as they used measurement, time, capacity, multiplication, and comparison to make decisions about their rides. Students had to use their calculations to make design choices, connecting the numbers they found to how their roller coaster would actually operate.

Students then used their calculations and design decisions to build their roller coasters. As they created, they tested their ideas, encountered problems, and made adjustments to improve their designs. This process of designing, testing, and revising required students to return to the original criteria and consider whether their ideas worked within the given constraints. The challenge connected math and engineering through a real-world problem, requiring students to balance creativity with constraints and use numbers to support their decisions.

Students shared their completed theme parks during our showcase, explaining their designs and the thinking that went into them. Students used their calculations and design choices to explain why they built their rides the way they did.

My hope is that students left the Theme Park Challenge seeing math as more than something to solve on paper. It can be a tool for designing, comparing, making decisions, and creating something that works.

If your child joined us, ask: What was the capacity of your ride? How long did one ride take?

-Cristina