1 research outputs found
The comfortable roller coaster -- on the shape of tracks with constant normal force
A particle that moves along a smooth track in a vertical plane is influenced
by two forces: gravity and normal force. The force experienced by roller
coaster riders is the normal force, so a natural question to ask is: what shape
of the track gives a normal force of constant magnitude? Here we solve this
problem. It turns out that the solution is related to the Kepler problem; the
trajectories in velocity space are conic sections.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure