Will A Slinky Travel Faster Down Stairs After Adding Mass?
Joseph Evans
Intro to Physics
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the experiment was to see if adding mass to a slinky affected how fast it traveled down the stairs. From the background research, it was hypothesized that adding mass to the slinky would make it travel down the stairs slower. This was hypothesized because adding mass to each side of a slinky would cause more force to be needed to pull the slinky over. To perform the experiment the following steps were performed. First, the materials needed for the experiment was collected. Next, the books were stacked on top of one another to create stairs.
After that, the slinky was placed at the top of the books and pushed over the front of the
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The results of the experiment were that when mass was added to the slinky, the slinky took longer to travel down the stairs. On average, the slinky with mass added to it took an extra 0.095 seconds to travel down the course.
INTRODUCTION
The Purpose of the experiment was to find out if a slinky would roll down the stairs faster when mass was added to both ends of the slinky.
When observations were being made, it was found that when one end of a slinky fell down the stairs the other end of the slinky was pulled with it. Then since there is enough force, when the slinky contracts the other back end of the slinky is hurled down the stairs. This is then repeated continually until the slinky reaches the bottom of the stairs. In addition, it was observed that the slinky is an extension spring. This was concluded because there are three main different types of springs. An extension spring is a spring that when pulled apart, then tries to contract and keep it’s shape. When the slinky traveled through the course the same thing was observed. The same thing was observed with the slinky. When the front end of the slinky was dropped down the stairs, the slinky was extended and the back end of the slinky tries to compress with the
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In the fourth experiment, tests were created to see which size of slinky would travel down the course the most consistently. What was changed in the experiment was the size of the slinky. A large and a medium sized slinky were tested. It was found that the large slinky was able to travel down the stairs an average of 8.33 times out of 10, and the medium slinky was only able to complete the course an average 5.33 times out of 10. It was found that the larger the slinky more consistent it is able to travel down the stairs. While experimenting it was observed that when the smaller slinky was able to make it down the course it was much closer to hitting to stairs than the larger slinky. In addition, it was also observed that the smaller slinky seemed to travel faster down the stairs than the larger slinky. Figure 4: Results for testing to see which slinky could travel down the course the most consistently. CONCLUSIONS
In the first experiment it was hypothesized that the more mass added onto to slinky the more mass added to the slinky the slower it would move down the stairs. From the data, the
We put a rectangular piece of cardboard vertically in the middle of an empty rectangular box. One side of the box was filled up with damp soil, and the other side was filled with dry soil. We filled the soil up to the level of the rectangular piece of cardboard, so that the cardboard wall would not deter the sowbug from crossing. We gathered 4 sowbugs, and placed them in a petri dish. We placed the sowbugs one by one on the border between both soils. Each of us tracked one sowbug, and diagrammed the movement. Every minute we would make a mark of where the sowbug had travelled. We continued this process for five minutes. We took the sowbugs out of the chamber, and placed them back in the petri dish. We repeated the experiment under the same conditions. Because we were short on time, we kept the same sowbugs for the second experiment
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affects the speed of a roller coaster car at the bottom of a slope. In
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I will use arithmetic and algebra to investigate the relationships between the grid and the stair further. The variables used will be: Position of stair on grid = X Sum of all the numbers within the stair = S Step Size= n Grid size= g 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 11
Fig. 6 © HowStuffWorks 2002. How Seatbelts Work [online]. Available at: http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/seatbelt-spring.gif [Accessed 17th November 2012
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