Assistant professor Meredith Greer, a mathematician, is oriented toward the applied side of her discipline. So when colleague Chip Ross speculated about a course using the roller coaster as a vehicle for teaching math and physics, she climbed right aboard.

This idea becomes reality for Short Term 2005, thanks to Leslie Milk '05 and Nate Stambaugh '06, who designed the unit during summer 2004 under Ross and Greer's supervision.

The work included building a rolling-ball demonstration track and contacting roller-coaster designers for information. It's hoped that the unit will include a field trip to a coaster park such as Ohio's Cedar Point.

A Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant supported the development process. "A big goal of that grant is to get math and science ideas to a broader range of students than might otherwise be the case," Greer says. Hitching those ideas to a pop-culture phenomenon is one way to get them interested.

"We're hoping that seeing the math and physics in action will help students understand some of those concepts," says Greer, whose own research is in bio-mathematics. "There's definitely hard science going on, but it's fun."

Greer should know. A roller coaster fan herself, her favorite ride is Millennium Force, at Cedar Point. The world's tallest, fastest coaster when it opened, in 2000, the Force is "one of those," she says, "that you walk up to and think, 'I can't go on that ride.' "