Colossus_Rollercoaster

Location | Thorpe Park | Park section | Lost City | Type | Steel | Status | Open | Opened | March 22, 2002 | Manufacturer | Intamin AG | Designer | Werner Stengel | Model | Multi looping Coaster | Track layout | Intamin Tri Track | Lift/launch system | Chain lift hill | Height | 103 ft (31 m) | Drop | 98 ft (30 m) | Length | 2,789 ft (850 m) | Max speed | 45 mph (72 km/h) | Inversions | 10 | Duration | 1:32 | Capacity | 1,300 riders per hour | Cost | £10,000,000 | Max G force | 4.2 | Introduction Colossus is a giant assault on both the body and mind - 850 metres of twists, turns, loops and plunges, not to mention a world record 10 inversions! When Colossus opened in 2002 it meant that Thorpe Park housed the only roller coaster in the world to feature ten inversions. The previous record for number of inversions on a roller coaster was Dragon Khan at Port Aventura, with eight. Amazingly, Colossus goes upside down more times than all of the roller coasters at Alton Towers combined - pretty good going, considering there are eight roller coasters there! There is now another roller coaster in the world with 10 inversions, but it's an exact replica of Colossus located nearly 6000 miles away in China! Colossus features a colossal track length of 2789 feet, reaches heights of 100 feet, and makes a top speed of 45 mph - there's also an incredible barrel role section of track that features four inversions in a row! The physics behind it … Roller coasters are driven almost entirely by basic inertial, gravitational and centripetal forces, all manipulated in the service of a great ride. A roller coaster has no engine or power source of its own. For most of the ride, the train is moved by gravity and momentum. To build up this momentum, you need to get the train to the top of the first hill (the lift hill) by using a chain lift, in the case of Colossus. The purpose of the coaster's initial ascent is to build up a sort of reservoir of potential energy. As the coaster gets higher in the air, gravity can pull it down a greater distance. The potential energy you build going up the hill can be released as kinetic energy: the energy of motion that takes you down the hill. Once you start cruising down that first hill, gravity takes over and all the built-up potential energy changes to kinetic energy. Gravity applies a constant downward force on the cars. The coaster tracks serve to channel this force -- they control the way the coaster cars fall. If the tracks slope down, gravity pulls the front of the car toward the ground, so it accelerates. If the tracks tilt up, gravity applies a downward force on the back of the coaster, so it decelerates. The tracks allow the coaster to do horrifying loops and twists. Since an object in motion tends to stay in motion (Newton's first law of motion), the coaster car will maintain a forward velocity even when it is moving up the track, opposite the force of gravity. When the coaster ascends one of the smaller hills that follows the initial lift hill, its kinetic energy changes back to potential energy. In this way, the course of the track is constantly converting energy from kinetic to potential and back again. This fluctuation in acceleration is what makes roller coasters so much fun. In most roller coasters, the hills decrease in height as you move along the track. This is necessary because the total energy reservoir built up in the lift hill is gradually lost to friction between the train and the track, as well as between the train and the air. When the train coasts to the end of the track, the energy reservoir is almost completely empty. At this point, the train either comes to a stop or is sent up the lift hill for another ride. Loops As you go around a loop-the-loop, your inertia not only produces an exciting acceleration force, but it also keeps you in the seat when you're upside down. A roller coaster loop-the-loop is a sort of centrifuge, just like a merry-go-round. In a merry-go-round, the spinning platform pushes you out in a straight line away from the platform. The constraining bar at the edge of the merry-go-round stops you from following this path -- it is constantly accelerating you toward the center of the platform. The loop-the-loop in a roller coaster acts exactly the same way as a merry-go-round. As you approach the loop, your inertial velocity is straight ahead of you. But the track keeps the coaster car, and therefore your body, from traveling along this straight path. The force of your acceleration pushes you from the coaster-car floor, and your inertia pushes you into the car floor. Your own outward inertia creates a sort of false gravity that stays fixed at the bottom of the car even when you're upside down. You need a safety harness for security, but in most loop-the-loops, you would stay in the car whether you had a harness or not.