Lab 8

The Ride of Your Life!

Introduction

You have the most wonderful job in the world. Due to your fascination with amusement parks, you are interested in becoming a design engineer. You secure a job with a company that designs amusement park rides, particularly dark rides. You develop new designs and modify your customers' existing rides in order to increase capacity, safety, or maybe enjoyment levels.

The design of rides involves meeting a number of specifications, conditions, and constraints. These may include safety, capacity, space, degree of interactivity, appearance, environmental impact, building codes, handicap access, legal issues, building costs and operating costs. The design of rides requires a group of people with many different talents and academic backgrounds. It is truly an interdisciplinary team activity. Because of developments in technology, there are new demands on designers to include interactive components in dark rides. For instance, in some rides, cartoon characters pop in and out from numerous locations when the rider prompts their appearance by flashing a laser beam at a target. These interactive rides are not limited to theme parks anymore. They are seen in malls, hotel lobbies and restaurants.

As you address the technology problem of designing amusement park rides, you will be expected to use the scientific method (problem, question, hypothesis, test, decision). The scientific method will support and guide your thinking process as you work on the lab.

Technology Problem

The local amusement park, Utopian Adventure Land, has hired you to design a ride called Treasure Trove. One of the client's particular concerns is the ride capacity. The ideal capacity is 400 riders per hour. The ride cars each hold two passengers. What would be the optimum dispatch time (how often should another car enter the ride) in order to reach the optimum capacity of 400 persons per hour?

Below is a layout of the ride (not drawn to scale) showing the different sections that you encounter as you go through the ride. The themed sections within the ride itself are called zones. Passengers are loaded and unloaded in the dispatch area shown at the bottom of the drawing. One consideration in determining the dispatch time is that the car will dispatch without any wait time if the first zone is clear. If the car is placed in the dispatch station before the first zone is clear, it will wait for a clear signal. Therefore, the time for a complete lap around the ride's track can vary slightly from one time to the next depending on factors like the loading and unloading of special-needs passengers or mechanical problems. In your planning you just need to base your calculations on the typical times involved.

Bibliotechnology Research

The first two steps of the scientific method (problem, question) suggest that you give the problem more definition and ask questions about it. To accomplish this, you need to locate and process information pertinent to amusement rides. This leads to bibliotechnology research. On the basis of your research, write a paper which summarizes the nature of and types of amusement park rides, explores recent trends in the technology of rides, and address concerns for the safety of riders. You may wish to include a glossary of terms in your paper. Be sure to cite sources. Once you have completed this paper, you will have a context in which to begin the process of solving the technology problem and designing a ride that operates near optimum capacity. However, the need for research will not end when you have completed this paper. You should anticipate doing further research to support your work on the technology problem.

Mathematics Tools

You will need to identify, select, and apply mathematics tools that help you to describe and solve the technology problem. Useful mathematics topics include: the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), distance = rate * time, scaling, functions, graphs, and techniques for presenting information in tables. Skills for organization and analyzing information are especially important for this lab.

Phase One       Analysis Of Existing Ride

Your design team has been working on the ride as it is shown on the previous page. Table 1 below contains specifications for the ride. Some of the values have been provided for you, others you will need to calculate. Note that within the ride itself the speed, V, will be constant.

Phase Two       Recommendations For Change

Once you have determined the current capacity you need to identify changes that can be made to increase the capacity to 400 riders per hour. There are some things that you cannot change: the dispatch time you computed earlier, the number of passengers per car, and the overall track length. Also, Tr, the time in ride, can be no less than 2 minutes 30 seconds and no more than 3 minutes.

The process of designing Treasure Trove will involve looping through the last three steps (hypothesis, test, decision) of the scientific method, perhaps several times. Your objective is to design elements of the ride so that its capacity approaches the ideal of 400 riders per hour. Each design you create can be viewed as a hypothesis. The test of your design (hypothesis) is to determine whether it increases the ride's capacity and how close the capacity is to 400. As a result of the test, you will make a decision as to whether to accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis (design).

As you develop a design, you will be expected to consider different scenarios, decide on your recommended changes to the ride, support your ideas with appropriate mathematics, and present your findings. As indicated previously, your findings, theories, suggestions, and supporting documentation should be recorded in a model portfolio. You should also prepare a professional oral presentation to present your recommended changes to the Utopian Adventure Land executives.

Phase Three       Submit A New Design

Congratulations! Treasure Trove was so successful that Utopian Adventure Land has asked you to submit a proposal for a new ride. Some of the safety concerns to be considered are safe speed rounding curves, the length of a passenger's arms so a rider cannot reach out to a display and touch or grab it at any point, and stopping features in case of failure of another car.

Before designing your ride, you should review the paper you have already written and do more research on the various aspects of dark rides. In addition to the web sites you have already visited, you should seek other sources – both electronic and print – on the science of amusement park rides. You may also want to research the psychology of the rides. For instance, how are other senses besides sight and hearing used in rides? There are numerous safety codes that must be adhered to; research what this involves. What safety features need to be considered in designing any moving ride? What features have to be considered in the dispatch area? To research timing issues, time other class members getting in and out of chairs and see what effect changing the configuration of seats or queue lines has on the time to load or unload a car. Survey other students to see how long potential riders are willing to wait in line, or what they think would be an acceptable time in a dark ride. The more information you gather, the better your overall design will be.

Your completed design should be in the form of a written proposal with all supporting documentation and cited sources. The report should include pertinent research, inspirations for design, adherence to specifications, and an actual representation of the ride. The representation should be at least a scaled drawing, but may also include a scaled, three-dimensional model. Your proposal for a new ride, together with all scaled drawings and physical models should be included in a model portfolio.

Model Portfolio

You should compile an organized record of all your work in a model portfolio. The record should be sufficiently detailed to allow a reader to repeat your work step by step. The model portfolio should include not only the products of your work, such as papers or physical models, but also a description of the procedures you employed to solve the problem. You can think of the model portfolio as your thesis concerning the technology problem. Be sure to cite all sources that you used.

Thesis Defense

You also should prepare a professional oral presentation of your model portfolio for delivery to Utopian Adventure Land executives (i.e. an audience selected by your professor). Since the model portfolio comprises your thesis and its defense, this presentation is a delivery of your thesis defense.