Physics Case Study

I came to the conclusion that using a marble is the best choice of ball to use to represent my car as it is in a better scale with the ramp because it weighs 5.3g and has a 1cm diameter. This is in scale with the ramp in a way that matches a car going down a road. I also tried different balls to make sure that the marble would give me the most reliable results. I tried the same experiment of rolling each ball down a metal ramp onto the carpet to see which ball ended up in the closest range within five rolls.

I found these results came up when I tested just on the carpet.

As you can see the marble had the least range between the rolls so it was the most reliable test. I decided to do the experiment on the carpet because I tried all three balls on the bare floor, the carpet, the yard and some grass and the carpet was again most reliable.

I was unable to get any results for the gravel as the marble rolled all over the yard in anything but a straight line. As the results show the carpet was the only type of floor that gave me reasonable results.

Now I have chosen which ball and surface I am going to use for my investigation I am going to carry it out. To do this I am going to roll a marble down my wooden ramp from different heights to find out how the speed of a car effects the stopping distance by seeing how much kinetic energy the ball loses once it has converted its gravitational potential energy.