Students at the Royal Oak Intermediate School in Covina, California built this 1/4 scale roller coaster in their gym.
Twenty-four feet tall at its highest point and occupying 10,000 square feet, the fully-functional ride towers over the 135 eighth-graders who are its designers, builders and decorators. Students and four teachers have spent thousands of hours measuring, sawing, constructing, painting and decorating the wooden structure over the last three weeks.
Painted mostly black and decorated with a solar system theme - the planets, the sun, Earth's moon, Orion's Nebula, the asteroid belt and a black hole - the roller coaster includes three lifts and drops, an enormous figure eight and a 360-degree loop. The track is 400 feet long, and students estimate that the car will reach a top speed of 35 mph coming down the final and tallest drop.
