Raceways & Rollercoasters – Marble Races

Time 30 minutes

Age 5 & up

Group Size 4 or more

Tags Balls And Tracks, Building, Experiment, more...

Marbles Pipe Insulation Problem Solving Roller Coasters Teamwork

Which marble will win the race?

Children get too few chances to experiment with materials and to design and build objects of their own creation. These Raceways and Roller Coasters activities allow your students these opportunities, and engage them on many different levels as well. Building these tracks and rolling marbles down them help children to develop problem-solving and teamwork skills and touch upon some basic principles of physics like energy, acceleration and momentum.

Preparation

See the Purchasing and Preparing Pipe Insulation PDF (click here to open) for instructions on finding and prepping the insulation. This pipe insulation will serve as the tracks for all of the marble-rolling Raceways & Roller Coasters experiments – and make sure to try all of the Raceways & Roller Coasters activities. The insulation comes in tubes, which you will cut in half lengthwise, so that you have two long U-shaped troughs to roll marbles down.

Depending on where you purchased it, you may have 3-foot or 6-foot pieces of pipe insulation. Each team will make two 6-foot tracks in this activity, so if you have 3-foot pieces, the first design challenge that your students will face will be how to attach the tracks together effectively. Masking tape works pretty well, and each team should have a roll, but let them experiment with connection methods and have them share their discoveries with each other rather than showing them how to do it.

Raceways & Rollercoasters – Marble Races

Suggested Materials

Foam Pipe insulation, 3/4″ – 1″ ID (12 feet per team) (see Preparation for information)
Marbles, 1/2″ glass (2 per team)
Masking tape
Wooden craft sticks (2 per team)
Yardsticks or Tape Measures (1 per team)
Paper, pencils

Make it Matter

Opening Discussion

Ask your students if any of them have ever been on a bicycle, scooter or skateboard before. Did they ever come across a hill? What did they notice about riding down these hills? Did they travel faster, slower or the same speed on different-sized hills?

Tell your students that they will be building 2 straight tracks per team and racing marbles down them. The tracks will be the same length, but you would like them to try all sorts of different angles for the tracks to see if this makes a difference in how quickly the marbles travel down the track. Hold a piece of insulation up for them and show them what you mean by different angles, first holding the track almost parallel with the ground, then showing them a steep angle (nearly pointing up and down). Ask them if they think the marble would travel differently down one of these tracks vs. the other.

Show them that they can change the angle of their track by just changing the height of the starting point of the track — the end of the track can remain in place.

The Challenge

Can you figure out if the angle of a track makes a marble travel faster or slower?

Make it Happen

Doing the Activity

Group your students into teams of 3 for this activity.
Hand out the materials to each
Suggest that each team point their tracks toward a wall, possibly with the end of the track even touching the wall—this will help prevent the marbles from rolling all around the room and will alleviate the inevitable conflict around which marbles belong to which team. The end of each track should be touching the ground as well.
Have each team experiment by building 2 straight tracks side by side. The first attempts should be made with the 2 tracks at the same angle. Teams should roll a marble down each track at the exact same time to see which track ushers its marble down fastest. At the same angle, the marbles should finish at the same time. By changing the angle of one track, students should begin to see some differences in how quickly the marbles complete their runs.
Make sure each team is recording their results. Rather than having them measure the angle of the track (which you can still do with a protractor, if you choose), ask them to measure the height of the starting point of their tracks for each trial. Because the ends of each track will be on the ground, the starting height should give good basis for comparison.

Make it Click

Let’s Talk About It

After 5–10 minutes, bring your students together to talk about what they’ve done. Have each team share their process. How did they set up their experiment? How did they know at which height their track was starting? What did they do to ensure that they were conducting a “fair test”? In this activity, a “fair test” is one where each marble is facing the same conditions in the experiment. Look for children who were holding their tracks rather than resting them on tables, chairs, etc. How could they be certain that they weren’t moving the tracks, shaking, changing the height, etc. while they were holding them? Can they be certain, if 2 students were holding the 2 tracks, that they were holding them exactly the same? How could they guarantee that the track was staying in a consistent position? Let them come up with their own thoughts as to how to ensure a fair test, but look for responses that suggest resting the track on something stable like a table, chair, pile of books, etc.

Make it Better

Build On What They Talked About

Send teams back to experiment some more and make sure that they are recording their observations. When the session is nearly over, bring the teams together again to share their results. Which starting height (angle) caused the marble to roll the fastest? Which height/angle caused the marble to roll the slowest, but still complete the run? Was there a point at which the angle was too steep or not steep enough?

Suggestions

After trying this activity, try the Raceways and Roller Coasters – Getting Loopy activity next.
The craft sticks, included in the materials list, work great as release “gates” for the marbles. Kids can place a marble at the start of each track, using the craft stick to hold the marble back so it doesn’t roll down. They can then lift the craft sticks at the same time, releasing the marbles simultaneously. DO NOT tell your students about this—let them discover this use of the craft sticks on their own. If no teams have invented this use for the craft sticks by the “Let’s Talk About It” discussion, you might try to find ways to lead them to this discovery by asking them what they think the craft sticks might be used for or other similar questions. If they still don’t get there, don’t worry—as you check in on the teams after they return to building their tracks, remind them of the fair test requirement, and ask if there are any materials that might help in ensuring a fair test. Eventually, one or more teams should figure out how the craft sticks can help them.