Investigation in to Gravitational potential energy.

Mohammed Ali

Science Course work Y11 GCSE

Planning

I am going to drop a piece of plasticine imitating a meteorite from certain heights to see whether there is a relation between gravitational potential energy, time, speed/velocity, acceleration, weight with crater depth and crater widths.

I will see whether there is a relation between the factors above by performing a simple experiment.

I will use the following apparatus:

Clamp stand
2x 1m rulers
bucket
sand
chunk of plasticine
stopwatch
myself

I will now annotate how I will construct the apparatus:

Then I will explain my predictions and formulas that I may use during this experiment:

Method

First of all I will measure the weight of the plasticine then I will drop a piece of plasticine from a certain height, record the time it takes to land into the bucket then I will take out the plasticine from the crater it will make and measure the impact depth and impact diameter I will then record results I have found in a table then put them in graph with a best curve of fit. To make it a fair test I will drop the ball of plasticine from a range of heights all from;25cm, 50cm, 75cm, 10cm, 125cm, 150cm, 175cm and 200cm, I have chosen a range of heights at a constant difference so that I can put it in a graph. I will do this at least 3 times so that I may find an average and be able to put it in a graph

Prediction

I think that as the height increases the speed will increase thus making the graph look steep. It rises slowly until it reaches terminal velocity (when it reaches fastest speed) this is where the graph will seem to be a straight horizontal line.

I also think the creator depth will increase steadily faster than the impact diameter as the height increases but as the height increases even more the impact depth will reach its peak and the impact diameter will increase

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