Police-Thief Chase
PREDICTION CHALLENGE: POLICE-THIEF CHASE
SCENARIO
A thief robs a bank and gets into his car. He flees the scene at constant speed but above the speed limit on the zone.
A policeman parked near the bank is enjoying a bagel and coffee. When he sees the speeding car, he drops the coffee and starts chasing the thief!
TASK
Recreate the incident using a battery operated car for the thief and a fan cart for the police.
PREDICTION CHALLENGE
If the police leaves a few seconds after the thief, where and when does he catch the thief?
Your team will produce a video and use LoggerPro to create a position versus time graph of the incident.
LAB JOURNAL
The following items should be included in your Lab Journal
Sketch:
A sketch of your lab setup. Identify each of the elements: which object represents the thief, the police...
Motion Representations:
For each object (thief and police), include:
- Verbal Description of Motion
- Motion Diagram (velocity and acceleration). Use your ruler and clearly label the vectors
- Type of Graph
- Describe the relationship between variables and the type of motion that each object has
Cut and Paste your graph in your Lab Journal.
Graph:
- Draw the appropriate curves on your graphs
- Calculate the slope of the line for the thief. What does this represent? What are the units?
- Draw a tangent to a point on the police's graph exactly where he meets the thief's car and calculate the slope. What does this represent? What are the units?
Data:
Thief
Initial position, time and velocity
Police
Initial position and time
Police-Thief meeting point
Position
Time
Velocity of thief
Velocity of police
(Thanks to Dolores Gende for this activity)