Physics Course Work Investigating Stopping Distances of a Car Essay Example

Physics Course Work: Investigating Stopping Distances of a Car Essay I am going to try and find out some information about how the stopping distance of a car, caused by the speed of the car before it begins to stop. To do this I am going to roll a marble down a wooden ramp onto some carpet from different heights and making the marble hit the carpet at different angles.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.15cm (height of ramp)MarbleGolf BallPing Pong Ball1st Time941011782nd Time951381653rd Time891252014th Time971801845th Ti me9399199As 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.FloorCarpetGrassYard (Gravel)1st Time with marble843942302nd Time879954103rd Time1089891604th Time82197705th Time38693520I 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.