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![“[Volleyball has] taught me how to fall correctly, and another thing it taught is that you don’t have to be the best at something to be good at it. If you just hit the ball in a smart way, then it still scores points and you’re good at it. You could be a background player and still make a much bigger impact on the team than you would think,” Anya Gert (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AnnaGert_JinTuan_HoHPhotoEdited-600x900.jpeg)
![“I'm not nearly there yet, but [my confidence has] definitely been getting better since I was pretty shy and timid coming into Harker my freshman year. I know that there's a lot of people that are really confident in what they do, and I really admire them. Everyone's so driven and that has really pushed me to kind of try to find my own place in high school and be more confident,” Alyssa Huang (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AlyssaHuang_EmilyChen_HoHPhoto-900x749.jpeg)
Physics students to travel to Great America
Eric Nelson
The Invertigo roller coaster at the amusement park California’s Great America features many twists and turns. Great America contains multiple roller coasters that physics and honors physics students will be able to ride on Friday.
May 5, 2016
Physics and honors physics students will travel to the California’s Great America amusement park to complete a lab about roller coasters and gravitational force on Friday.
Students who attend, comprising mostly freshmen but also including some students in other grades, will miss classes on the day of the trip. Those who chose not to go or cannot attend due to scheduling conflicts will complete an alternate lab assignment at the upper school.
“From a physics standpoint, [students are] going to be using themselves as an accelerometer to determine the number of g’s they experience while riding roller coasters. From a non-physics standpoint, they will be enjoying Great America,” physics teacher Lisa Radice, who organized the trip, said. “When people think of going to Great America, they think of having fun and going on roller coasters and eating bad food, but hopefully [students will] also now think about it in terms of forces.”
Many students are excited to visit the amusement park for the variety of rides available, which include roller coasters, carousels, swing rides and bumper cars.
“I’ve never been to Great America before, so I don’t really know what all the hype is about there,” Cedric Nowatzyk (9) said. “I guess it’s going to be an eye-opening experience hanging out with friends and exploring what this amusement park’s appeal is.”
Other students look forward to the lab assignment as well as the rides.
“I am super pumped,” freshman Meghna Phalke said. “[I’m excited to] go on rides with my friends. I think it’ll be really interesting to find out what [the physics teachers] have in store for us.”
However, some students are attending mainly to have fun with their friends rather than because they enjoy physics or the various rides themselves.
“I am terrified of roller coasters, and I hate the feeling of being on a roller coaster,” Zachary Wong (9) said. “I didn’t want to be the only one not going and miss all the other fun with my friends.”
The trip to Great America has taken place annually since 2000.
“It originally started because the freshmen didn’t have a class trip; there wasn’t sort of a specific thing for freshmen other than orientation,” Radice said. “So we thought we could get two things at once: we could get them to do physics and think about the academic side but also have a group class bonding experience.”
All of the physics teachers will chaperone the trip, along with some teachers of other subjects.
This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on May 4, 2015.
