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Summer high school course at Penn State Schuylkill studies amusement park ridesJul 13, 2012 (Republican & Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- SCHUYLKILL HAVEN -- A group of local high school juniors and seniors are seeking extreme thrills this summer while spending time in a classroom. Nine students from Blue Mountain, North Schuylkill, Pottsville Area, Schuykill Haven Area and Pine Grove Area school districts are taking a summer course at Penn State Schuylkill called Physics and Extreme Thrills. During the class, they will analyze the physics behind amusement park rides in the classroom and at parks. Taught by Michael R. Gallis, an associate professor of physics at Penn State Schuylkill, the three-week course runs until July 27 and includes three hours of daily classroom instruction with field trips to Hersheypark and Knoebels Amusement Resort. While in previous years the class had more students, 24 last year, Shannon Del Conte, program director and adult enrollment coordinator, said this year they only have six girls and three boys due to cuts in program funding. The university received approval from the state to offer the program, which is funded by the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program. As a result of this funding and a 50 percent scholarship offered by the university, the students will have their tuition paid in full. Del Conte said the students only had to pay $200 for an information technology fee and $100 for course materials. While the class this year is a physics course, in previous years the summer courses offered to high school students have included ecology, biology and renewable energy courses. On Wednesday, Gallis had the students strap on a vest with sensors, a monitoring device, then run around outside to see what the data looks like and to make sure they know how to operate the controls, since this is what they will be doing when they visit the parks in the next two weeks. The students will visit Hersheypark on Tuesday and Knoebels on July 24. "We will hit play just before the ride starts and again once it ends," Gallis said. At the parks, they will use the monitoring devices to measure how the speed, g-forces and even heart rate affected them. Data gathered from the electronic devices, along with video recordings, will be analyzed by Gallis and the students before the final exams are taken. Students also worked in small groups Wednesday to practice analyzing data and video recordings from an experiment they did in the gym throwing different size balls in the air. The videos were analyzed using a program from the Open Source Physics Project, which provides curriculum resources that engage students in physics, computation and computer modeling. According to the OSP, computational physics and computer modeling provide students with new ways to understand, describe, explain and predict physical phenomena. Throughout the classroom sessions, the students receive traditional instruction from Gallis, interspersed with computer simulations, while they will spend two days at the park riding different types of rides, including roller coasters, the swinging pirate ship and rides with circular motion, so they can see how the different forces affect their bodies. Most of the students said they were enjoying the class and one of the reasons Laura Dallago, 16, of Pottsville, a student at Pottsville Area High School, said she was taking it was since they would be earning three college credits. "It (the class) is interesting for sure," said Nicole Lloyd, 17, of Ashland, a student at North Schuylkill High School. "I thought it was a good college opportunity and it's kind of our first experience at something like this." Louise Hartman, continuing education staff assistant, who has been helping out with the class in the previous years, said she is looking forward to going to the parks with the students again this summer. "It's exciting to see kids get excited about science," she said. ___ (c)2012 the Republican & Herald (Pottsville, Pa.) Visit the Republican & Herald (Pottsville, Pa.) at republicanherald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |