Producing craters.

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Ben Speakman        Page         01/05/2007

Craters

Prediction

In this experiment I will drop a ball at varying heights into a tub of semolina and a tub of flour. I will measure the width of the crater produced. My prediction is that the craters width will increase as the height of the ball increases. I also believe that there will be a point where the width of the crater will remain constant no matter what the height of the projectile is. This is based on the fact that when an object is dropped gravitational potential energy is present an as it increases its decent it increases its velocity, until it reaches the terminal velocity, this gives the object greater energy which I think will move more semolina. The terminal velocity is the point I believe that the energy cannot be increased therefore the crater size will remain constant. I think the semolina will give a larger crater size on average. This prediction is based on the flours ability to clump together. I think the flour will just compress leaving a hole whereas the semolina will be blown away by the energy of the projectile.

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Method

I prepared the ice cream tub of semolina first. Making sure it was deep enough to encompass the crater the ball would produce at the maximum height. I used a stand and clamp to hold a meter ruler with the end level with the plane of the semolina. I then used a large iron ball, around 4.5 cm in diameter. I used a smaller rule to drop it from the first height of ten centimetres. Carefully I removed the ball taking care not to disturb the crater it had produced. I then used a smaller ruler to measure ...

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