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Amusement park physics

Using amusement parks for education

An amusement park can be seen as a large laboratory, offering an abundance of accelerated and rotating coordinate systems, giving unique opportunities to investigate the laws of physics and experience them throughout the body. What is up? What is down? How does the heart respond when you are upside down?

We have written a number of articles about amusement park physics, e.g. about Students making sense of forces in a roller coaster loop and more recently, a book about Physics for the Whole Body in Playgrounds and Amusement Parks.

This Swedish part of this www-site includes curriculum material for students and teachers for the amusement parks Liseberg and Gröna Lund, as well as for a few other Scandinavian parks and a number of articles have been written in connection with this and other projects. We also run a closed Scandinavian Facebook group discussing learning activities in amusement parks, and also a smaller, but more international group, EduMusement, for people interested in various aspects about science, technology and education in amusement parks.

For the English part of the www site, were collect some of the material considered to be useful outside Sweden. See also a small booklet See! Feel! Try! for visiting amusement park with children (with Comments).

The Swedish amusement parks remained closed for all of 2020. Read more about the background. They opened again in June 2021.

Physik im Prater und Spielplatz - presentation for the 70th Fortbildungswoche, Wien 23 Feb 2016

With Newton at Liseberg - advent calendar with physics of the rides.

Material relating to specific rides

Whereas roller coasters are often individually designed for parks, other rides are often found in many different parks. We collect here material in English for common rides, as well as links to some in-depth studies a few Scandinavian roller coasters. The material is based on many years experience of using amusement rides in physics education, from middle school to university. Go directly to material about Wave Swingers, Teacups, Drop towers, Star Shapes, Roller coasters and Roller coaster elements.