Upon announcement of our big project, I was mostly excited because I’ve always loved doing hands-on projects in school. But I was also a little nervous because Crane Britons theory about Revolutions (what the project was about) didn’t make total sense to me, so figuring out how I was going to conform the project was a worry. Seeing older projects gave my group ideas about creating something that follows a circular motion, but besides that we didn’t have much inspiration to work off.

Our first day in the maker-space was a tough one. We were coming up with lots of good ideas, but none that we could turn into a demonstration of the two revolutions. There was definitely some talking over each other, and arguing. But finally we somehow came to the idea of merry-go-round (which looking back would’ve been pretty cool), but from there we got the idea of our rollercoaster.

Planning what the coaster was going to look like was a very important process. We actually went through many different designs, but ultimately we decided that it was going to be a “double-headed” rollercoaster. So there would be one starting point, but two separate tracks coming from each side. One side would be the French side. And on the other, the American side.

On the French side, we created it so it would have a big drop, a sharp turn, and a little up and down towards the end to represent the ups, downs, twists and turns of the French Revolution. But ultimately, it would come to an end where it started, and theoretically you could just keep keep getting on riding it again and again, representing how the Revolution follows Crane Brinton’s theory.

But on the American side, we built it so there would be a big build up, and a peak, but then it would just cut off. This shows how the American Revolution does not follow Crane Brinton’s theory on Revolutions. The American Revolution does not consistently continue to repeat itself like other revolutions such as the Haitian, French, or Egyptian ones do. To represent the different stages of the Revolutions, we created little signs that explained how each part of the track represented a different stage.

Hot glue and little pieces of cheap wood were our best friends while making this project. Our rollercoaster was definitely not following the laws of physics or anything, and it definitely wasn’t the prettiest it could have been, but I think in the end, it came out pretty well. And making it with Siena and Hillary was very fun, and also interesting to see how well we worked as a team. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I thought it was a good end-of-year activity, and it was fun to connect something so hands-on to history. I also enjoyed seeing the other groups projects, and how they made their own progress.