Jack's Lab Report (Team Triumph)

Materials Investigation




Image result for dictionary

(Jack) Jonathan Stuart Lagrow
February 2017


Materials Investigation
Introduction:
The purpose of this experiment was to see the potential and kinetic energy of different materials. We were wondering if we changed  the materials of the ramp, would the matchbox car go farther? Potential energy is waiting to do things. Kinetic energy is the potential energy happening. The potential energy in my investigation was when the car was at the top of the ramp and the kinetic energy energy was when the matchbox car was going down. We wanted to investigate  the potential and kinetic energy of different materials in this experiment.


  
Hypothesis:
My group thought the pvc would go farther because the pvc pipe is longer, but the wood went farther. We also thought the particle board would go farther because it is basicly wood but it is a little smoother. That was my groups hypothesis and why we thought the different ramps would go farther.

Materials:
  • 3 books
  • 1 matchbox car
  • Ruler
  • Wooden ramp
  • Pvc ramp
  • Particle board

Procedure:
  1. Place all three books on a empty spot on the floor.
  2. Place a ramp two cm on top of your books.
  3. Place ruler on the end of the ramp.
  4. Place matchbox car on the top of the ramp (back wheels on end of ramp).
  5. Drop matchbox car from the top of the ramp.
  6. Measure distance from the front of the ramp to the front wheels of the car (measure in cm).
  7. Record distance on a piece of paper.
  8. Repeat step 1-7 for trail two and three.
  9. Repeat step 1-7 again but instead of wood ramp use pvc ramp for trial 1-3.
  10. Repeat step 1-7 AGAIN but this time instead of pvc ramp use particle board for tiail 1-3.





Data:


Materials
Trial 1
Trial 2
Trial 3
Average
Wood ramp
439 cm
456 cm
407 cm
434 cm
PVC ramp
386 cm
347 cm
344 cm
359 cm
Particle board
413 cm
486 cm
500 cm
466 cm

Conclusion:
My hypothesis was disproved because one of the test did not go with our data. The controls we kept the same were the car and the ramp being two cm on the dictionaries. The variable we changed was the ramp. A possible error in the investigation was if the car hit the ruler. It happened once, but we redid that trial.


Further Investigation:
  1. Would the vent pipe go further than the particle board?
  2. Could we have used wooden blocks instead of dictionaries?