Investigate and understand the relationship between the kinetic energy and stopping distance of a toy car.

Fair Test:

I will make my test fair by:

• Instead of trying to push the cars from their stationary positions, I will place them all onto the ramp and let them go, so that no cars have an unfair head start.
• Also I will make sure that the starting positions of all of the cars is the same and this will be done by marking a starting line on the ramps.
• By measuring the height and angle of 5 books and 10 books so that when continuing the experiment no car would have an advantage
• By using the same ramp to keep consistency

Method:

1. Collect equipment and assemble as shown in diagram.

2. Choose 5 books to put under ramp
3. Get a toy car and weigh it
4. Release car from the top of the ramp
5. Use a stopwatch to time the how long it takes the car to stop
6. Measure the length travelled by the toy car
7. Repeat Steps 3-5 twice more
8. Repeat Steps 3-6 with 10 books underneath the ramp
9.  Repeat Steps 3-7 using another car
10. Repeat Steps 3-8 using a third car
11. Record results
12. Pack up

Results:

Observations

From this experiment I have observed that more the amount of gravitational potential energy there is then when converted into kinetic energy and the car is released there is a longer stopping distance.

The cars’ molecules have very weak bonds with other molecules. When the two surfaces come close together, the forces make them act as if they are slightly sticky, and this will also slow down the rolling movement by acting as a brake. Inertia is the thing that makes it difficult to make a big mass start to move or stop it once it is moving. If the car is stationary then you have to use a force to overcome its inertia and get it to move. If the car is moving then you have to use a force to overcome its inertia and stop it moving.

Conclusion:

I conclude that the relationship between the stopping distance and kinetic energy is that the more of the kinetic energy that there is, the longer the stopping distance.

The fastest car was the yellow car on all three attempts. The yellow car was also our heaviest car. The greater the mass, the larger the acceleration needed to slow it down. As the force of friction is not increasing all that much in proportion to the increased mass, the more mass an object has, the longer it will take to decelerate and the longer its braking distance will be.

There are 2 sorts of friction. These are static and dynamic friction in order for the cars to move they had to overcome both of these.