An Investigation into Ball bearings different speeds and surface areas, through glycerine.

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An Investigation into Ball bearings different speeds and surface areas, through glycerine.

Myself and my experiment partner recorded some times of metal ball bearings passing through Glycerine, a type of oil. There were nine different ball bearings used, ranging from a minute diameter of 1.45 mm to a large 24.92. Three different times were recorded for each ball bearing. From my knowledge I know that if an object has the same density as the liquid it is in, then it will not sink or float, but stay still, just as the liquid will. I therefore predict that, the larger the ball bearing, the faster it will pass through the Glycerine. However, there is one slight drawback to this statement. The tube filled with the glycerine only has a circumference of about 24 or 25 cm. This means that after the diameter of the ball bearings become larger than about ten or eleven cm, then the time taken to pass through the Glycerine of seventy cm, will increase. This owes to the fact that if the ball bearing is so large that the liquid, glycerine, cannot pass it, easily.
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Ball bearing [large] Liquid has to squeeze past the ball bearing

Plastic container tube The liquid substance [Glycerine]

To carry out this experiment we used the measurements in millimetres and centimetres. The amount of time was measured in seconds, not to minute's e.g. 125.83 SECONDS. We used stopclocks to time the ball bearing passing from the start of the seventy centimetres to which we calculated the speed. To help explain, here is a diagram to aid.

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This diagram shows the ball bearing falling through the Glycerine. The arrow pointing ...

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