Semester #1 Highlights

Unit 2 : Fast Car Project

Within this project, our goal was to create a vehicle or object that could travel at the fastest possible speed while using certain devices and calculated forces. In making this car, we went through a series of steps that gradually added various forces onto the car, which, in turn, resulted in the car gaining speed as we made our way through this project. We had begun the project at a slow pace, determining the backbone to our calculation of forces, looking at how a water bottle would travel along various surfaces. Using this, we calculated the forces and speed, ultimately determining that the best course of action would be to create something that partially bypasses the heavy force of friction.

Within our following steps, we used an original car comprised of 3 pair of wheels, a long base, and rubber bands that could hold a phone needed to record data in real time. This newly improved vehicle allowed for us to reach high speeds at an efficient rate of acceleration, as we can now use wheels to take away from the large force of friction that was previously applied. Additionally, we were able to place our car at a sustainable slope in order to naturally add the force of gravity, in which its components would cause a downward acceleration for our car.

In our final steps, we looked towards adding external forces to increased the overall speed that could be achieved by the car. Most notably, we utilized the forces applied by an Atwood machine and an external rubber band launcher. Using pulley systems and heavy weights sustainable to the rest of our system to add more direct force on the car to move down the slope at a fast rate. Lastly, we set up a rubber band launcher that could be placed directly onto the slope. This would add a tension slope that pushes the car in the first moment of it drop, which would account for a large portion of the total force applied to the car. 

All of our calculations and diagrams describing the project can be seen in the presentation below...

Content {Forces}

Velocity - the rate at which our car travelled a given distance in a certain amount of time, generally being one second

•  Velocity was the main value we were aiming to maximize in this project. Using the external forces applied, the car was able to travel the set distance in a shorter amount of time, which increased the velocity of the car.

Acceleration - the rate at which the velocity of our car would change within the given amount of time, which would determine how much our car was speeding up and could be directly obtained through our calculations with the external forces

• Acceleration is one of the key component in forces, which is why it was a critical point of interest when calculating the rest of our value. At our final step, we calculated a final net acceleration of nearly 34 m/s^2.

Forces - 

• Newton's First Law : An object will stay at rest or continue moving at whatever motion it is moving at unless an external force is applied to that object

• Newton's Second Law : The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force inflected on that object, while being inversely proportional to the mass of that object

• Newton's Third Law : Every applied force has an equal and opposite force as a reaction

Friction - the opposing force to motion that acts on a object through its contact with a surface or medium; Force of friction is opposite to other force

• Friction was an opposing force to our car and would change with the weight, acceleration, and angle of our car. At the end, we optimized the car to the best of our abilities to achieve a friction force of 0.05N.

Tension - the pulling force present on a string that would be applied to our car in the direction the force is going

• Tension forces were most notable in the external forces that we applied to our car. For instance, we utilized a pulley as well as a rubber band launcher. For one, the tension force was equal to the gravitational force on weight that would be applied to the string of the pulley, whereas the rubber band launcher could be set to any tension force we would like, which would be measured by a spring scale. We resulted with a pulley tension force of 0.69N and a rubber band tension force of 10N. 

Circular Motion - utilized a series of equation and concepts that would allow our car to travel a critical speed around a circle with a certain radius

• Using the equation F = (mv^2)/r, we were able to determine the velocity at which our car would travel within a circle given a radius around a table and the mass of the car. With this, we resulted with a centripetal velocity of 0.74 m/s and a centripetal acceleration of 0.94 m/s^2.

• We were able to determine the centripetal force of the car by testing out how much force would be needed for the car to begin skidding using a spring scale attached the the side of the car. This would mean that this is maximum applied centripetal force on the car, and the velocity can be noted as a critical velocity.

Reflection

Within this project and the rest of this first semester of AP Physics, I have learned and applied many skills that have developed me. For instance, I saw that I did well regarding critical thinking and conscientious learning. Through this project and all the others, we were required to create various things that required the engineering process and other aspects of creation. Doing this deeply developed my sense of critical thinking. Furthermore, we have always split our projects into steps, progressively getting more difficult and increasing our results with each one. This concept has enhanced my conscientious learning ability, as I am always looking to create and do more for a better, more accurate result. However, there are a few skills that I could have improved on more. For instance, communication was a lack in many of my projects due to the limited time we had together. This meant that much of the project was split into sections for each person to do, and there was a lack of clear communication on what was needed to be done and when it was expected to be finnished. Additionally, cultural competence was a lack in many of our projects as well. When looking so much into the physical, logical point of our projects, we failed to look deep into the cultural background of the project, which was something that we value to look into in class for the fast car project. Despite this, we could have added more cultural meaning into our project as a whole in order to reach this skill concept and develop more into our characters. However, with the first semester of AP Physics coming to an end, I look back at all our work and see that I am very satisfied with the results. Despite all of the difficult concepts and calculations that were involved, I see that it made our results more impressive and complete, which adds to the fact that I deeply enjoyed the work and process that it took to get to this point.