Fast Car Project

Overview

This project was broken up into 6 parts that covered different forces.

 Our first task was to create a car to perform our early trials on. After we had gathered and recorded this data, we were tasked with creating free body diagrams to visualize the forces acting on our cars. We started out using a pencil case as the first version of our fast car. We first found out the mass of it and went on to put it to the test with a spring scale. Using that information, we were able to calculate the net force and force of friction. This rudimentary version of our fast car allowed us to figure out the basic mechanisms of our main forces.

In part 2, we were introduced to the concept of friction. We learned the differences between rolling, kinetic, and static friction. We used the data from part 1 to calculate the coefficient of friction of our car on different surfaces with varying steepness and texture. We discovered that as the surface becomes rougher, the coefficient of friction increases, and with smoother or sloped surfaces, the coefficient of friction is much less.

For Part 3 of this project, we were tasked with proving Newton's 2nd Law, force=mass x acceleration. We chose the net force to be our independent variable of this experiment, meaning it was what we changed to see results. We then used an app to determine the acceleration, which ended up being our dependent variable. We then had to graph this data. When doing so, we found that the mass of our car was roughly equal to the slope of our graph. Our car weighed .378 kilograms, which is close to 0.441. This is because the equation y=mx+b is similar to f=ma, so m=f/a the same way that m=change in y/change in x.

In part 4 of the fast car project, we further developed our knowledge by taking similar trials with a car but on a slope this time around. We used our knowledge of angles, theta, and trigonometry to eventually help solve the acceleration of the vehicle. 

In Part 5 of this project, we were tasked with changing the forces that were acting on our car to make it either speed up or slow down. We attached a pencil case to the end of our vehicle and took trials measuring the acceleration of our car down a slope with and without it present. We then compared the acceleration net force and force of friction. We found the acceleration through an app and plugged in the mass to find net force. 

Lastly, in part 6 we were introduced to centripetal force and circular motion. We hooked up the car to a spring scale, pulled until it just started to move, and recorded the force needed to overcome static friction. We set the force of friction equal to our centripetal force and substituted the values we knew to find both velocity and acceleration of our car. 

Content

Velocity: "the speed of something in a given direction"- This was often one of the values we used to calculate other values such as the centripetal acceleration in part 6.

Acceleration: "the rate that velocity changes over a certain time period"- We used acceleration whenever we were solving for the force acting on an object, because of the equation f=ma. 

Newton's 2nd Law: "f=ma"- We were tasked with proving this formula to be true using our cars in Part 3 of our Fast Car project.

Friction: "the resistance force that is enacted when one object moves over the over"- This was a topic we were introduced to in part 2 of this project, where we analyzed how different surfaces and angles adjusted the friction. We used the equation Ff=μFn. 

Circular Motion: "the movement of an object along the circumference of a circle"- We learned about circular motion and centripetal force in the last part of the project. We used the formula v^2/r to find the centripetal acceleration, and then mv^2/r to find the centripetal force of our car. We learned that centripetal acceleration would always point towards the center point of the circle as well.

Reflection

In this project, my group was good at critical thinking and being conscientious learners. We had to make many decisions in this project that reflected the knowledge we had gained. We had to determine which equation would be best to use with the given values we had, and we were able to analyze several different ways to get a certain value. When reviewing all our calculations at the end, we went through and fixed several large mistakes that we had noticed as well. At one point we were having difficulty learning how to create a properly accurate graph on Google sheets. We used our resources by asking both our peers and then our teacher, and ultimately got clarity on the confusion. My group was very good at managing time and staying on task. We were able to do our best work while still being ahead of schedule, which allowed us time to fully check our calculations. My entire group made sure that we all knew the content. When one of us had a question about what we were learning, we would work together to answer it even if it didn't relate to the part of the project we were working on. We all helped each other gain a better understanding of the material.

Somethings my group didn't do so well were communicating our presentation and collaborating with each other. Even though we understood what we were talking about, I felt we should have spent more time practicing our presentation, especially given how we finished slightly earlier than other groups. I think if we had done so, our presentation may have gone smoother, and our points were able to be shown more clearly. However, we still ended up with a decent score, so it wasn't a major problem. Our group also struggled with collaborating on the project with each other. This was mainly due to the fact that one of our group members was absent for a decent part of the project, and there were other instances where another group member would be absent. This made it difficult to share ideas and collaborate with each other to the best of our ability. We would spend our extra time catching up group members on the content and progress they missed. We could have exchanged contact information to be able to communicate and work on the project together.