Last week our class started researching friction for science and how it affects speed. We decided to conduct an experiment to figure out what exact amount of friction will speed or slow down a car and what materials affect that speed.
Our class had split up into teams and each group received a toy car, an exact amount of books, five different materials, a board, our SESE copies and a stopwatch. This is what we did with it:
- Firstly, we propped the wooden board on top of a few books and measured the height and distance of the board. Our class had to make sure that the measurements were the same or else the experiment would not work.
- Next, we put the toy car on top of the board and let it roll as soon as the stopwatch was turned on. We measured the time the car took to get to the bottom and recorded it in our SESE copies.
- Thirdly, we stuck the top of a carpet to the board and recorded the time taken by the car to go down this time.
- Finally, we repeated the same measuring process again with the bottom of a carpet, wetting the board and insulation. The groups then divided the distance of the board by the time taken to go down and found out the speed of the car.
Our small experiment told our team that the top of the carpet had the least friction and the wet surface had the most friction out of all. Now here are some photos of the experiment: