The Thrills of Physics
For Area High School Students, Theme Park Becomes a Laboratory

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 26, 2008

Let's be honest here: How much is an amped-up teenager really going to learn about physics by riding a roller coaster called the Mind Eraser?

Not a whole lot. But Isaac Newton would have been sooo jealous.

More than 4,000 students from across the region poured through the main gates of Six Flags America in Largo for Physics Day yesterday, passing onto the park's faux-Colonial "Main Street 1776" the day before the park officially opens for the season. Janet Jackson and the pop song "Live and Let Die" -- apparently the preferred music of the Founding Fathers -- blared in the background, and the students vibrated like atomic particles. Some wore their physics team T-shirts and brought in accelerometers and stopwatches; others were just along for the rides.

Barnabas Adekanye, Irving Delco, Frailen Ramirez, Ludwin Romero and Johnny Wilks, all sophomores at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville who study engineering, were somewhere in the middle. They had brought a 28-page workbook of problems to solve. It was complicated stuff with a lot of formulas.

"Compare the change in potential energy to the gain in kinetic energy," went one question about the Mind Eraser. "Within experimental error, was energy conserved? Explain your answer."

Johnny, 15, had an easier explanation for what they were learning: "Like how the gravity and force relates with the loops and stuff."

So they trotted off to the Mind Eraser and strapped themselves in. The seats allowed their legs to dangle. While students sitting behind them charged one another up, these students had that far-off look, as if they were weighing the potential risks of going at a top speed of 60 mph through loops and corkscrews and a 91-foot drop.

For Barnabas, 16, it was his first time on a roller coaster. He came to the United States from Nigeria three years ago.

"The best advice I can give is, don't hold back screaming," said Irving, 15.

Before the ride, Irving said: "I'm not scared, but I'm going to cry like a little girl."

Afterward, he said, "Actually, I cried like a dude."

"I don't know. It makes you want to throw up," said Barnabas, who had heeded Irving's advice to the letter. In a photo taken of the ride, he bore an expression of absolute terror.

Their next destination was a ride called Roar. The boys tried to scare one another as Frailen, 15, timed the coaster using his iPhone. They wrote down the coaster's specifications in their workbooks. They would do the actual problems on the bus ride home, they had decided.

"It's wood," Irving said.

"It could collapse at any moment," Johnny said.

"This was, like, slower, I guess," Ludwin, 16, said after they were done. (He was right: The top speed of Roar is 50 mph, though it puts the rider through 3.5 times the force of gravity.) "There was a lot more curves and stuff."

On the Batman-themed ride, the Joker's Jinx, the coaster is propelled to 60 mph in three seconds by a series of magnets. The technology is similar to what physicists use in particle accelerators, but these thoughts were far from the minds of the students.

Irving screamed repeatedly -- words he probably wouldn't want his family to hear -- as the ride twisted and turned, throwing his insides with great force.

Afterward, he gave a more sophisticated explanation. "The forces are gravitational force, centripetal force and magnetism working together to create a fun ride," he said. "You can't see it, but you know it's happening."

After a lunch of chicken, corn, and macaroni and cheese, the boys headed out for their final and most intense experiment: Superman: Ride of Steel. By now, physics had been mostly forgotten. There was a deeper lesson being learned at the theme park: overcoming primal fear.

While they waited, a girl who had just finished the ride walked by with a boy, flopping her hands and crying. "I can't feel my hands!" she wailed.

"The ride is going to do that?" Frailen said with alarm.

Irving crossed himself. Ludwin tried to duck out on the lame excuse that he had just eaten, but the power of peer pressure found him and everyone else strapping on the orange seat belts and lowering the safety bars over their laps. The coaster lurched to a start and climbed up. Way up. One hundred and ninety-seven feet up.

As it crested the hill to a 205-foot drop that would hit a top speed of 73 mph, the boys started screaming. Ludwin waved his arms out of the coaster. Barnabas gasped shouts of horror. Others uttered unprintable imprecations. After the drop, the ride took them into a series of twists and humps that had everyone grabbing the safety bar for dear life.

"I love physics! I love science! I love engineering!" Irving yelled.

Then, with perfect comic timing: "I love my mommy!"

As rapidly as it started, the ride was over. The boys had survived their encounter with mass times acceleration, and they stumbled out of their seats dazed but triumphant.

"I feel great," Frailen said.

"I am officially a man," Irving said.