Acceleration, gravity, and inertia aren’t just vocabulary words, they’re lived experiences when you’re upside down on a roller coaster. Just ask the students who took their classroom to Lagoon! Many Physics II students took a class trip to Lagoon on Friday, May 9, as a part of Utah State University’s Physics Day at Lagoon. As the Physics Day at Lagoon website puts it, “Each spring, USU Physics Day at Lagoon offers the chance for thousands of middle school and high school students to gather at Utah’s largest amusement park to ‘do physics,’” and it couldn’t be said better. Multiple sponsors and contributors organize various physics-based contests centered around amusement park physics, with thousands of dollars in prizes and scholarships awarded to top students and teachers each year. Contests for students include a Physics Bowl, a G-Force measuring competition, Device Demo Design, Ride Design, Logo Design, Robotics, Mousetrap Car, and—of course—an Egg Drop Competition.

Many Rowland Hall students participated in the “Sky Drop,” an egg-drop competition from the Sky Ride at Lagoon. The contest encompasses multiple physics principles that students must use in order to do well. It is a traditional build-a-thing-so-your-egg-doesnt-break-when-you-drop-it-from-a-high-place competition that everyone has done in school, with a unique physics twist. Students’ egg container must stop in the middle of a bull’s eye after students drop it from a moving skycar! Rowland Hall students Alex Wilson, Boston Stark, and Niklas Tognina saw success in this competition, winning first place overall for their egg container build! You can watch the winning drop on our Instagram! @rh_gazette

This trip allowed students to engage with the physics they learned in class in a real environment! Roller coaster potential and kinetic energy calculations turned into real-life coasters, and ferris wheel velocity problems were experienced in real life! Physics Day at Lagoon brought classroom concepts to life as students applied their knowledge in thrilling, hands-on ways. From roller coasters to egg drops, they proved physics is more than math—it’s a fun experience felt all around us!