May 9, 2008
Six Flags: High School Physics
What do a TI-84 calculator, Iron Wolf, and a 16 year-old boy named Michael have in common? Why. they are all things that could be found at Great America Physics Day of course!
Over 10,000 students from Illinois, Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan bussed their way to Six Flags Great America for the annual physics day in which high school students pretend to learn about velocity and actually play on rides all day. We kid. Students actually learn a lot about how "stuff" works based on a curriculum by Nathan Unterman, a Glenbrook North High School science teacher who also wrote the book, Amusement Park Physics, which we love. Because if you're going to have to figure out the amplitude of a driven oscillation, you might as well have fun vom-ing on Raging Bull while doing so. [S-T, photo by Hendricks Photos]
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wow, TI-84s. those bring back memories of hating life in high school.
I remember G.A. Physics Day. My teacher all told us to tell our parents that we were going to "Gurney Illinois" and not Great America... heh..
Anyway, yeah, lots of fun learning about gravity from off the Eagle and everything else that drops you suddenly.
Six Flags Great America? What's that?
Oh, you must mean Marriott's Great America.
I always wanted to go to GA for physics day, but I was too busy playing Drug Dealer on my TI-84.
I had Unterman for physics at Glenbrook North. Even in the physics for dummies class that I was in, he was a great teacher. A really weird guy, but a great teacher. We listened to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida one day as an example of something – it's been nearly 15 years since I had his class. He told us all about the amusement park stuff, too. I think that's about when he wrote the book.
I loved physics day at six flags.
It was awesome. I learned nothing.
It was great.
My entire sophomore class of my smarty pants school went to Physics Day and I think only about two people did the "experiments" and all the work and the rest of us copied their data. Good times.