The mathematics and physics of roller coaster design help ensure a safe ride, despite the human errors and mechanical malfunctions that sometimes cause problems.

A roller coaster designer is part mechanical engineer and part magician. His or her job is to keep the riders of the coaster perfectly safe while at the same time scaring the daylights out of them. It is really not magic, of course. The designer's secret tools are physics and mathematics.

Staying on Top

It may seem like magic when a roller coaster hangs upside down at the top of a loop, with nothing between it and the ground, but it is really nothing more than the principle of inertia. The physicist Galileo Galilei developed the concept of inertia in the sixteenth century. According to Galileo, objects that are in motion continue to move in the same direction and at...