AMS students take on a roller coaster assignment

Mrs. Bickhams’s seventh grade math classes at Atlanta Middle School spent the last few weeks creating paper roller coasters.  
The project began by the students being “hired” by a failing amusement park. Using equations and expressions, students looked at the data from the amusement park to see where the problems were.  
They decided that the key to saving the park was to create a new roller coaster.  
From this, they designed their coasters and built them using card stock and tape. 
Each group had to name their roller coaster and then present it to the class.  Marbles were used to simulate the cars on the coaster. 
The marbles were timed as they went through the ride in order to gather data to assess how fun each group’s coaster was. 
The unit was finished by using ratios, unit rates, and proportions to find the “Fun Factor” score and the production cost of each coaster, then comparing these values to see which roller coaster was the most cost-efficient for the park.