Acceleration of falling cones Investigation

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Ann Hitchcock                     

10DJG  10YH

Acceleration of falling cones Investigation

Planning:-

Safety Statement:- To make this investigation safe I will wear sensible shoes, this make sure that I will not fall or trip on the table whilst carrying out the investigation.

Prediction:- I predict that the smaller the surface area of the cone the faster it will fall. I know this as the more surface area the cone has the more air resistance there is.

I also know this as when I carried out some research on parachutes, I discovered, that the larger the parachute the quicker the forces balanced, making the parachute fall slowly. Also, the smaller the parachute the longer it took for the forces to balance out, making the parachute fall much quicker. When I looked at a person freefalling (standing up) the results were that this also took at long time for the forces to balance out. When I saw the results of a person lying down I could see that the forced balanced out quickly, making the person fall slower.

I know that it doesn’t matter what weight an object has, it falls at the same acceleration, and lands on the ground at the same time. On the moon a feather and a golf ball were dropped at the same time, they both hit the surface of the moon at the same time. In any atmosphere when there is a gas or a liquid they initially drop at the same acceleration, encountering a drag force; this increases as it goes faster. The drag force increases until it equals the weight force, the forces are then balanced and it can’t go any faster. This is called terminal velocity.

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Equipment:- The equipment that I shall use will be a stopwatch; to make sure that the times are as accurate as possible, a table of which to stand on when dropping the cone, and sensible shoes whilst standing on the table, I will also have a metre rule to measure the 2m distance, from the floor to the bottom of the cone.

Method:- In this experiment I will time how long it takes for a cone to fall 2m. Each time I will make the cone ...

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