Front Matter

Since 1995, when I first used amusement park projects in teaching, a very large number of teachers and students in universities and schools have come on board, and I am so grateful for all creative discussions and support over the years.

The science faculty at the University of Gothenburg initiated an educational project, “NP”—Problem Solving in Natural Sciences, to help bring a more diverse student group to study mathematics, physics, and environmental science. As a new lecturer, I couldn’t have received a better start. I was surrounded by colleagues with more experience and a shared interest in imparting the best possible education on our new students, with Inger Wistedt and Ference Marton introducing us to a way of thinking and talking about teaching and learning, informed by research in Math and Science Pedagogy, thus bringing our observations to a higher level of reflection. I would also like to thank Johan Boman, who had seen amusement park physics material from the AAPT and suggested that we use the nearby Liseberg for an introductory amusement park project. I would also like to thank Maria Sundin for our shared examinations of the Liseberg project presentations, and Maj Hanson, Mats Andersson, and Hasse Carlson for the experience of oral group exams of more extended projects and for developing a community of learning and teaching for teachers and students involved.

Overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and creativity brought by the first cohort of students in 1995, we applied for—and received—funding from the science faculty for a group of students to create a website for next year’s students. Thank you, Axel, Manda, Sara, and Åsa for your dedication to the first version of the website, which has now changed shape a few of times. The project diffused into several other educational programmes within the University of Gothenburg and nearby university colleges in Halmstad, Skövde, and Borås, with funding from the universities during the early development, as well as from the National Research Council and the Council for Renewal of Higher Education.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Magnus Karlsteen for initiating a number of development projects, partly supported by Chalmers Strategic Effort in Learning and Teaching (CSELT). I very much appreciated the Ph.D. students assigned to assist in the introductory physics course for engineering physics from 2005 and their contributions, in particular, Jonathan Weidow. I would also like to thank Andreas Isacsson for co-teaching the course for a couple of years before taking over, and Gabriele Ferretti and Tomas Carlson for inviting me to run Liseberg projects as part of their courses in other engineering programmes.

The integration of presentation skills with physics understanding benefited very much from the collaboration with Andreas Eriksson, Fia Börjesson, and Magnus Gustafsson at the division for Language and Communication at Chalmers. The students often created very memorable presentations, with engaging discussions about the physics involved, sometimes including videos, acting, or demonstrations with physical models they built.

Taking amusement park activities outside the classroom requires collaboration with a large number of actors. In 1999, Margareta Wallin-Petersson, pro-dean for education at the faculty of science involved her zoo-physiologist colleague Michael Axelsson and students, suggesting that they might apply the TeleHeart equipment on students on rides—not only on giraffes and fish—as an activity for the Gothenburg international science festival, with classes to be supervised by Ph.D. students. Through the TeleHeart screen, students would be able to stand on the ground and watch the heartbeat of their fellow students being turned upside down in large swings. They also involved experienced high school teachers Elisabeth Strömberg and Bengt Åhlander. Since these early days, Zenit Läromedel has provided support for measurements, both for training and hardware: first 1D accelerometers for use with graphics calculators and later the Vernier Wireless Dynamic Sensor System. Thank you, Anna Hess and Conny Modig, for your help and support over the years.

The science faculty also established contact with the top level management at Liseberg. After a test run with one class, we were ready to take classes for visits supervised by Ph.D. students, including Sara, Manda, Ami, and Åsa during the Gothenburg International Science Festival in 2000 and 2001. Liseberg generously supported the participating classes with entrance and ride tickets, as well as continued professional support from Bo Larsson, head of operations; Daniel Lindberg, head of ride management; and Ulf Johansson, head of technical safety. I am so grateful for what we were able to do together—and also for the times you said no, when my ideas were too crazy!

To support teachers who wanted to visit with their classes, a large science teacher conference arranged by the University of Gothenburg in 2001 included science activities at Liseberg. The preparations led to deepened contacts with the Education department, in particular the technology education group with Aadu Ott, Maria Svensson, and Ann-Marie von Otter and math teacher educator Lisbeth Lindberg. You have all taught me so much about creative approaches to deal with the complexities of teaching in schools and helped me build a network of dedicated teachers, including Elisabeth Settergren, Helena Sagar, and Ingela Bursjöö.

My dream of doing science days at Liseberg materialized after this teacher conference. As a pilot project we were invited to Liseberg to do a test run with one class in December 2001. We very much appreciated that Lasse Haglund brought his group of well-prepared and enthusiastic 10-year-olds for an afternoon with experiments on selected rides and then invited me and Sara Bagge to the class for follow-up interviews. During the years 2002–2004, up to 2000 students aged 10–19 had exclusive access to the park for 2 hours, supported by colleagues and student teachers from the University of Gothenburg, as well as from the university colleges of Borås, Skövde, and Halmstad. Lotta Johansson from Navet science center in Borås brought several of her staff to take part in one of the science days and also shared her enormous expertise, analysis, and creativity concerning activities outside school.

Dr. Werner Stengel, I am so happy that you accepted the Doctor honoris causa awarded to you by University of Gothenburg in 2005. You let me share your first tour on Balder. You have continued to help me understand more and more about roller coasters through your book, interview links, e-mails, and on site in Liseberg. I also very much appreciate you having invited me to meet your family—Christel, Andy, and Michaela—both in Göteborg and in München.

Organizing science days in amusement parks requires well-developed local and regional networks of actors with their own complementary networks. I have found international networks very useful, within the educational research fields of teaching and learning, professional development of teachers, and on learning in informal settings.

Lotta Johansson introduced me to the science center community, ECSITE, in 2001, which, in turn, helped me find the CILS—Center for Informal Learning and Schools—where I met Paul Doherty in 2003 who introduced me to the Exploratorium teacher institute. There I found a teacher who let me join his class in the yellow school bus from San Fransisco to a science day in Great America, Santa Clara, in 2012, where I finally got to meet the organizer Clarence Bakken (PhysicsDay.org).

The invitation from Gary Williams to contribute to the November 2005 thematic issue in Physics Education on “All the fun of the fair” inspired a more formal write-up of projects, and I have enjoyed our collaboration ever since, including being part of the Editorial Board of the journal.

My appointment in 2009 as director for National Resource Centre for Physics Education (NRCF) at Lund university, with a mission to support physics teaching from preschool to high school, gave me a platform for continued work with amusement park physics. It also led to new networks of actors involved with the professional development of teachers and many discussions about physics learning, within and outside the center. My dear collaborators, Lena, Peter, Lassana, Nina, Åsa, Urban, Kim, and Moa—I have learned so much from our interactions over the years.

The playground physics work, which had started in 2000 together with Anna-Stina Alrik when I was a guest professor at the University College of Skövde, continued at the NRCF: It grew to be a part of physics courses for preschool teachers first at Lund and then at the University of Gothenburg in collaboration with Dag Hanstorp. In 2014, Ulrika Ryan and Patrik Mars invited NRCF to a middle school pilot project, resulting in two joint papers. Playground physics has become a part of many professional development courses offered by the NRCF for middle- and high school teachers.

Scientix—The Community for Science Education in Europe—funded mini-conferences for amusement park educators in Europe. The first meeting in Mirabilandia in 2012 was organized together with Giovanni Pezzi and his co-workers in the project Matebilandia: Lorenza Resta, Stefano Alberghi, and Sandra Gaudenzi. The participants included Chris Chedzey from Thorpe Park in London; Ulrik Lundby Hansen working with educational projects for Bakken and Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; and Andreas Theve and Johan Lotsander from Gröna Lund. This was followed by a meeting at Gröna Lund and Vetenskapens hus in Stockholm in 2013, where a number of Swedish teachers were able to join the international group.

Christina Høj at Tivoli Gardens has assisted in the organization of professional development days for teachers from southern Sweden, including access to a classroom and an introduction to their educational activities across many curricular areas.

I am also grateful to the Europa-Park, for supporting a small teacher day in October 2019, in connection with a conference at ICSE—International Centre for Science Education—in Freiburg, and to high-school teacher Stefan Jaitner, who offered a preparatory tour and superb guidance to the rides and the park and also provided data, photos, and videos.

Even if science days are local, mathematics and physics are universal!

First, I would like to thank Peter Osbeck, senior ride manager, and Andreas Theve, Tivoli historian, at Gröna Lund for inviting me to be part of their organization of Edutainment Days 2010.

Andreas, you introduced me to the European Coaster Club and have always been ready to answer—or find answers to—complex questions about rides and about the amusement park industry, past and present. With your close relation to schools, school leaders, and politicians, you have lifted the Edutainment Days at Gröna Lund to a higher level every year, in a helical structure of trying, observing, interviewing, evaluating, reflecting, and revising. You have pushed the annual revision or tweaking of tasks, between September of one year and the next, together with Cecilia Kozma, Stefan Åminneborg, Tanja Nymark, Freddy Grip at Vetenskapens Hus (‘House of Science’) in Stockholm. You took up the challenge from participating teachers to create technology education components and managed to entice the technical staff at Gröna Lund to be involved. And thank you Patrik, Peter, Peter, and Göran for all the unique technology exhibit tables you have created, more and more every year, and for the joy and authenticity you and your colleagues bring to the discussions with teachers and students during Edutainment days.

Since I asked Chrystian Vieyra in 2014 about the possibilities to expand the range of the accelerometer in the first smartphone I used with the Physics Toolbox, you and Rebecca have invited me to collaborations and to try out new features. Rebecca (and Therese) even visited my two physics departments, at Lund and Gothenburg, giving seminars demonstrating many creative uses of smartphones with Physics Toolbox—no Swedish teacher should be able to claim that they lack experimental equipment! Thanks for your support and for everything you share for teachers to use! And thank you, Rebecca, for suggesting the AAPT/AIP as a home for my book!

In 2014, I contacted David Eager about forces during trampoline bouncing. Since then we have discovered many shared interests, including engineering, playgrounds, roller coasters, jerk, safety, and enjoying our love of physics. We have walked the floor of Euro Amusement Shows together, and you have introduced me to their IAAPA Safety Institute and taught me about details within safety regulations. Of course we have been on roller coasters and other rides, discussed data, data collection, and analysis. Our list of co-authored papers includes the most-read paper of the European Journal of Physics with nearly 150,000 downloads to date. In 2019, before the world came to a lock-down, David invited me as visiting Professor to the University of Technology, Sydney. David introduced me to his amazing co-workers, as we continued work on the concept of jerk, took me on a back-of-shop tour of Scenic World in the Blue Mountain, and met with physics educators in Luna Park, Melbourne.

Malcolm Burt’s suggestion to create a Virtual Theme Park and our collaboration on the project made me even more aware about how traditional physics textbooks focus nearly exclusively on a detached outside perspective. I have enjoyed our discussions and shared experiences of VR on amusement park rides and other contexts, and I learned a lot from your insights from a very different background. Of course, I have also enjoyed riding roller coasters together, even without VR, in Liseberg, Tivoli Gardens, Thorpe Park, DreamWorld, and Movie World.

In the spring of 2009, I contacted Andreas Veilstrup Andersen when I was organizing a visit to Tivoli Gardens for educators as part of the Nordic Physical Society meeting in June. Since then you have opened many gates. You introduced me to IAAPA and have generously shared your knowledge of parks around the world involved in educational projects and of who is who in the world of amusement parks. We collaborated in a (failed) proposal to the EU involving more than 10 countries in a Collaboration on Amusement Park Science and Technology Education Resources (COASTER) project. We rode Balder together in 2010 during your last incognito visit to Liseberg, before you were appointed CEO. You brought back Physics days to Liseberg, where we developed a revised, scalable format with increased teacher involvement, together with your co-workers, in particular Daniel, Kenneth, Robert, and Nathalie. You let me view the construction of Helix from the inside and to help me prepare student assignments, you arranged for me to have my accelerometer sensor ride before any people were allowed. You have invited me to press opening days and taken me to the top of Balder and walked me through the new underground ride Underlandet before anyone knew that Swedish amusement parks would not be allowed to open in 2020. Your friendship and trust are immensely appreciated!

Leslie, I am so grateful about the way we have been able to spend the roller coaster free 2020–2021 writing quarantine together at home, sharing frustrations, joys, and sorrows, movies, virtual performances, and excursions, as well as linguistic comparisons, grammar, word, and physics discussions over meals. I also want to thank you for joining me at least once for most roller coasters—and of course, for our three amazing children, Florence, Robert, and Richard, who have joined me for many playground and Liseberg visits (I guess there was a time when it was the other way round) as well as many roller coaster trips.

Ann-Marie Pendrill is a physicist who sees leisure, playtime, and amusement as some of the best opportunities for learning about the world. Any conversation with her—or a quick review of her most recently published papers—exemplifies how she is mesmerized by the experience of physical movement that most of us take for granted.

It was Ann-Marie’s interest in having students learn about physics through roller coasters and other amusement park rides that caught my attention a number of years ago. We related to each other through our passion for engaging with students in physics beyond the limitations of our classrooms, particularly by enabling students with tools that would help them connect data to their embodied experiences, which Ann-Marie aptly calls first-person physics.

While we first exchanged communications virtually, I met Ann-Marie in person in early 2018. Traveling with my 7-year-old daughter from Washington, DC, our first encounter with her was on a train between Malmö and Göteborg, where she greeted us with a warm cup of hot chocolate to take the edge off the bitter February chill. Over the next few days, we were subjected to many of the scientific delights that Sweden has to offer.

Ann-Marie’s passion for physics education for outreach was evident wherever she took us. One more notable experience I had was the chance to observe her interaction with a large group of preschool teachers for an in-service professional development workshop. Despite the staggeringly low temperature of −10°C (14°F), the teachers revelled in the opportunity to engage in meaningful play—now as adults—at the snow-entrenched playground in a city park close in Göteborg while at the same time contemplating the physical principles of the universe. (Her dedication to physics education in such conditions far surpassed my own. Unaccustomed to such weather, my daughter and I spent the latter half of the workshop in Ann-Marie’s car trying to evade the cold.)

Ann-Marie has convinced me that a ride on a roller coaster or carousel, or even an afternoon on a playground swing can help students to address deeply-held (and often naïve) ideas about physics. Carefully guided by an attentive teacher, activities we associated with leisure, playtime, and amusement can help students to attain a greater conceptual understanding of physics. Perhaps more importantly, learners of all ages can begin to associate what they understand about physics with their sensation of movement as well as the emotional elation that comes from having a good time.

Rebecca Vieyra

Close your eyes and think about your favorite amusement park ride! What do you see? What is the first thing that comes to mind? Is it how long you waited in the queue or how scared you were when you looked up to the highest point—or the anticipation when you looked down on the park or landscape from the top the first time you rode it? Is it the exhilaration of accelerating down the first drop or feeling much heavier than normal in the valleys? Do you recall the design of the station building, the sound of the machines, or the soundtrack from the queue—or the person you shared the first ride with?

This book will help you discover the invisible forces that cause your body to accelerate along the drops, twists, and turns. It will help to bring life to textbook examples: acceleration is no longer an abstract concept when it can be felt throughout the body. When a bus starts, stops, or turns, it must push your body forward, backward, or sideways to change your motion.

Acceleration can be illustrated or measured with simple toys or electronic data collection, as well as with photos and videos, complementing traditional textbook presentations. Many of the experiments and investigations suggested in this book have surprising outcomes that have been found to raise interest and curiosity with children from preschool age, while sometimes surprising teachers, and even physicists.

The book is primarily written for teachers of grade school to first-year university courses. However, it would also be useful for parents who want variation on the playground or in repeated tours with children in amusement parks. It will help roller coaster enthusiasts refresh their school physics and apply it in authentic situations or understand the data collected on their smartphones. It can support physicists and engineers who like to share their love for physics in enjoyable situations, and discover large scale versions of textbook Gedanken experiments.

The activities can be enjoyed without mathematics, but the book also includes a formal mathematical treatment to provide a more direct connection to traditional physics textbook presentations. Mathematics is an abstract but very powerful tool! The wide range of additional representations used in this book can deepen the understanding of both maths and physics.

The observations and authentic experiences can be enjoyed together in families and other groups, without a need for immediate explanations. The initial focus could instead be on working together to describe observations and ask questions for possible additional investigations. In 1871, Maxwell wrote¹:

Traditionally the studies of motion start at rest, and then motion with constant velocity, continuing with the counterintuitive consequences of Newton’s first law, that a body continues its motion unless forces on the body are unbalanced. This book builds instead on the more direct experience of acceleration, as it requires a force according to Newton’s second law. The system we consider is your own accelerating body, or a sensor moving together with you, and accelerating in the same way, in one, two, or three dimensions.

Amusement park rides are large machines, involving advanced technology to keep us safe while creating an illusion of danger as we move fast, up and down, in twists and turns.

Buckle up, put your head against the headrest, and come along for a ride together with Newton’s laws for a new way to view the experiences in towers, carousels, swings, and roller coasters.

Ann-Marie Mårtensson-Pendrill has a background in computational atomic physics. After defending her thesis at the University of Gothenburg in 1978, she spent two years as a post-doc at University of Washington in Seattle, followed by a year as a post-doc at University of Oxford. During this time she worked on calculations of weak-interaction induced parity non-conservation (lack of mirror symmetry) in atoms. In Oxford, she met her husband, who was post-doc in the experimental part of the same research group. In 1981, they both got positions at the University of Gothenburg, where Ann-Marie became lecturer in 1994 and got the title Professor in 1999. In 1997, Ann-Marie was awarded an APS Fellowship “for her contributions to the development and use of atomic many-body methods to explore relativistic effects and parity non-conservation in heavy atoms.”

She has served on several national and international committees, including the Physics Committee of the Swedish Natural Science Research Council 2002–2007, the Council for High Performance Computing 1994–1997, and the International Commission for Physics Education (ICPE) 2006–2011. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Editorial Board of Physics Education, published by the UK Institute of Physics (IOP).

Education has played an ever increasing role in her work. Amusement park and playground examples have been part of her teaching since 1995. During the years 2003–2009 she chaired the school contact group of the science faculty at the University of Gothenburg, including organization of regional project exhibits and chairing the science committee of the European Science Olympiad in 2010.

She has been involved in evaluations and distribution of funding to Swedish Science Centers and also in several graduate schools for teachers sharing their time between teaching and research. From 2009 until (mandatory) retirement in 2019 she was the director of the Swedish National Resource Centre for Physics Education at Lund University, where she was appointed Professor in Physics Education and Science Communication in 2015 and is now Senior Professor.

She enjoys when theoretical results for forces in amusement park rides are close to experimental results. She finds that her internal joy over the agreement is very similar to the joy experienced when a complex atomic theory calculation gives results in good agreement with an experiment—and on occasion useful predictions. She remains fascinated by symmetries, including the equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass, as well as questions about right and left.

This book builds on an expectation that calculations based on physical principles can give meaningful results, even after simplifications and approximations. Whereas in many everyday situations the simplified model may bear little resemblance to the real object, many amusement park rides instead offer real-life illustrations of idealized textbook situations. Theoretical results can be compared with authentic experiences and data.

The book is primarily intended for teachers of high school or introductory university courses, providing a wide range of examples involving motions in one, two, and three dimensions, to complement traditional textbooks. Vector concepts, introduced in the Appendix, are used throughout the book. Although brief introductions are given to each topic, these are intended as a reminder of what has already been learned elsewhere, not as a replacement for traditional textbooks.

The first eight chapters introduce different topics, primarily within the area of Newtonian mechanics. Each chapter starts with simple examples, but progresses to more complex situations. A few sections, marked with asterisks, involve more complex math and can be skipped. The final four chapters introduce other aspects and a broader outlook on how playgrounds and amusement parks can be used in education and on aspects to share with friends and family.

Using playground and amusement parks for learning physics fits well into the principles listed in the Framework for K-12 Science Education¹ including:

1. Learning science and engineering is essential for all students at all grade levels.

2. Instruction focuses on student engagement with real-world phenomena and problems.

3. The three dimensions (practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas) need to be integrated during learning and instruction.

As motions in playgrounds and amusement parks are rarely in only one direction, vectors are used in all descriptions of motion and forces. The examples support investigations as part of the Scientific and Engineering Practices described in the Framework:

1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)

2. Developing and using models

3. Planning and carrying out investigations

4. Analyzing and interpreting data

5. Using mathematics and computational thinking

6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)

7. Engaging in argument from evidence

8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Playground and amusement park examples support physics learning through natural connections to important core ideas for physical sciences:

1. Matter and its interactions

2. Motion and stability: forces and interactions

3. Energy

The examples in the chapters are also chosen for their possibilities to offer a wider variation to common textbook presentations and to challenge an incomplete understanding of force and motion in one, two, and three dimensions.