Stopping Distance Investigation

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Stopping Distance

Planning

I am investigating how the stopping distance of a car is related to the speed that it is going and how

much force is used to stop a car going at a certain speed and for a certain distance.

For my experiment I propose to test the distances need for a car travelling at certain speeds,

due to Kinetic energy being converted into other types of energy. I could set up a simple apparatus that

will be sufficient to take accurate readings from. I will drop a toy car from a ramp that is a set height,

then measure the speed at the bottom and measure the distance the car travels. From this I can work

out the original gravitational potential energy and the kinetic energy and therefore the energy converted

to other types of energy. I predict that the gravitational energy will not equal the kinetic energy because

some will be lost to sound, heat and kinetic energy in other directions from the forward direction

desired. I will have a ramp help up, a ruler going along the side to measure the distance the car travels.

On the car after every three runs I will add 100grams. I propose to do the experiment 3 times for each

height of block so that I can work out the average, by doing this I will make the experiment more
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accurate. I will do this experiment at two different heights, 1) 5.5cm and 2) 10cm. The amount of

weight that the trolley/car will carry will go up to and including 400grams. The diagram for the

experiment is below.

When planning my experiment, I will need to take into consideration the following points:

Safety

Fair testing

Equipment

How many results I will take

What range of variables I will experiment with

Safety

With this experiment no harmful substances are being used, ...

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