Fast Car Project
Evidence of Work
For this project, our group was tasked with making a "fast car," or simply, finding or building something to be used as a vehicle to then analyze the force components when the vehicle was put into motion. To do this, we provided a force to make the car accelerate, and then drew a free body diagram to display all the involved forces. The goal of this entire project was essentially to prove Newton's Second Law, F=ma, through trials of changing different variables acting on the car.
The first step of this was to simply test the process. Each member of our group started this project with individual work to test their own "car" on how it interacted with forces and friction. On top of this we added in some other elements to demonstrate the different physics we were learning this unit. For example I put my car on an incline to show some more advanced math. After this we compared the cars before choosing one to base our project around. Our project was centered around different types of frictions so we pulled the car using the same force on carpet and then hardwood floor to see how the acceleration changes. To make it creative, the car we modeled our project as if the car we used was the vehicle Tracy Chapman references in her song Fast Car as that is the song our teacher mentioned when introducing the project.
Content
Force: A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. The equation for force is F=ma.
Acceleration: The rate of change for velocity, whether it is speeding up of slowing down. The equation for acceleration is a = Δv/Δt.
Static Friction: In static friction, the frictional force resists force that is applied to an object, and the object remains at rest until the force of static friction is overcome.
Kinetic Friction: In kinetic friction, the frictional force resists the motion of an object.
Coefficient of Friction: The ratio of the frictional force resisting the motion of two surfaces in contact to the normal force pressing the two surfaces together. It is usually symbolized by the Greek letter mu (μ)
Reflection
This project was super interesting and two things that I personally think our group utilized creativity and communication. The creativity when developing the concept surrounding the project meant that ours was a little more fun and original than just analyzing the physics. Communication on this project had to be utilized as we were using two different examples, each from different students so good communication was necessary to coordinate planes and make our presentation while we were online. Something that could have been improved upon was the collaboration skill. While communication might have been sufficient, collaboration as a whole was lacking and looking back on the project it felt like group members were being left out. This is something I want to definitely avoid happening in future projects.