What quantity did you change?
Labs / Physics
Energy Skate Park
Drag the skater to drop it from any height, then pull the track nodes to sculpt hills, dips, and ramps. The stacked bar splits the skater's energy into kinetic, potential, and heat — and unless friction bleeds it away, the whole bar never changes height.
Labs / Physics / Energy Skate Park
Energy Skate Park
Drag the skater to drop it from any height, then pull the track nodes to sculpt hills, dips, and ramps. The stacked bar splits the skater's energy into kinetic, potential, and heat — and unless friction bleeds it away, the whole bar never changes height.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Physics explains how changes in forces, energy, motion, and matter produce results we can measure. This model lets you test one part of that relationship at a time.
Explore
Try the model
KE 0 JPE 0 Jv 0.0 m/sh 0.00 m
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Drop the skater high on one side. Does it ever climb higher than where it started?
- Where along the track is the skater fastest, and how does the bar look at that spot?
- Turn on friction. Where does the missing kinetic and potential energy actually go?
- Build a hill taller than your drop height. Can the skater get over it, or does it turn back?
- Make the skater heavier. Does a bigger mass reach the bottom of the valley any faster?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Name the quantity you changed, the quantity that responded, and the physical rule connecting them. Use a readout or visible change as evidence.
Check
Before you leave
What measurable result changed?
Which physical idea connects them?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.