What keeps rollercoasters at a continuous speed throughout the ride so that it’s able to complete twists, turns and loops?
In: Engineering
Gravity, momentum and motors.
Many rollercoasters have motors either on the track or the coaster itself that pull it up hill. Then gravity pulls it back down. It doesn’t go at a continuous speed, there will be slower and faster sections.
It’s not much different then riding a bike up and down hills. You use a lot of effort to get to the top of the hill, then coast and pick up speed going down hill. Once you’ve got all that speed built up, you can go up a smaller hill without pedaling, trading your speed for elevation and getting slower as you move up.
For turns and loops it’s the same thing, just building up enough speed that your momentum will carry you through the loop. Rollercoasters are carefully designed for how fast they should be going on any part of the track to ensure they’ll have enough speed to do loops, but not so much speed that they become too dangerous.
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