Is this document missing answers? Get answers Get FREE answers and explanations from our expert tutors press agallist wie coaster. Your Task: Designing a roller coaster requires careful consideration of several physics concepts. Most notably, mechanical energy must be kept track of to ensure the Roller Coaster completes the course. Friction is also an important consideration, however it is rather complicated to deal with exactly. A simple but poor approximation can be made by assuming a constant drag force resulting in a constant energy dissipation per unit track length. This is not very accurate as shall be seen later, but it is better than ignoring friction all together. "g" as a unit of acceleration refers to the gravitational acceleration near the surface of the earth (9.8 m/s'). This unit is often used when referring to accelerations experienced by a person in a vehicle because when the vehicle accelerates, it pushes the passenger along with it. This pushing changes the normal force experienced by the passenger and the person feels as if she is in a gravitational field that is the resultant of the actual gravitation field and the negative of the vehicle's acceleration. For example if the vehicle were accelerating in the up direction at 1g, the passenger would experience 2g of acceleration. Another important design consideration is the accelerations experienced by the passengers. The goal here is to maximize the excitement of the ride without actually endangering the passengers. An important figure to remember here is that an average person will start to black out if the "headward" acceleration s/he experiences reaches 4 g. By comparison, people can withstand accelerations on the order of 10 g in directions perpendicular to their bodies without any permanent adverse effects, however most Roller Coaster cars would jump their tracks at such extreme accelerations