Battery-Powered Vehicle Lab
I am currently studying the concept of linear motion. This concept was investigating this through the use of a battery-powered vehicle, as mentioned in the title. The purpose of this lab is to find the speed of a battery-powered car and further my knowledge and skills in designing experiments, gathering and analyzing data, and creating graphs to showcase the collected data.
Materials:
One battery-powered car
Three meter sticks
One stopwatch
Procedure:Lay down one meter stick and time how long it takes for the car to travel one meter.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable data; record the collected data.
Lay down two meter sticks and time how long it takes for the car to travel two meters.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable data; record the collected data.
Lay down three meter sticks and time how long it takes the car to travel three meters.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable dada; record the collected data.
Materials:
One battery-powered car
Three meter sticks
One stopwatch
Procedure:Lay down one meter stick and time how long it takes for the car to travel one meter.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable data; record the collected data.
Lay down two meter sticks and time how long it takes for the car to travel two meters.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable data; record the collected data.
Lay down three meter sticks and time how long it takes the car to travel three meters.
Time the car a total of three times to gather viable dada; record the collected data.
This data chart depicts the data collected as the experiment was done.
This is the graph that I created for this experiment. It accurately portrays the car's speed. The speed being .42m/s. You get this speed from using the y=mx+b equation because the slope is the same as the speed in this case. Y is just a value on the y-axis, m is the slope, x is the corresponding x-axis value, and b is the y-intercept. Because the line starts at the origin (because if there's no time, there's no distance either), be is just 0. So you have y=mx+0 so far. Then you just plug in any coordinates for the x and y. Using 1 for y and 2.08 for x, you get 1=m(2.08)+0. You divide 2.08 from both sides and end up with .42=m, so the slope is .42.
The whole purpose of the lab was to figure out what the speed of the battery-powered car was. To do this, you would need to gather accurate data. That's why you have to test something more than once. There's no way you can start and stop a stopwatch exactly when it needs to start and stop, so you have to do it multiple times and take the average. Using this technique, you're able to gather more reliable data because the outliers are weeded out through the averaging process as you circle the exact time.
The whole purpose of the lab was to figure out what the speed of the battery-powered car was. To do this, you would need to gather accurate data. That's why you have to test something more than once. There's no way you can start and stop a stopwatch exactly when it needs to start and stop, so you have to do it multiple times and take the average. Using this technique, you're able to gather more reliable data because the outliers are weeded out through the averaging process as you circle the exact time.
Questions:
Question 1: What can you say about the motion of the buggy from the graph in your data (describe the motion)?
Looking at the graph, you see a straight line. This tells me that the "buggy" is moving in a constant speed. It will always move .42 meters every second. It also moves in a positive direction as it starts at the origin and moves away.
Question 2: What does the slope of this line tell you (what does that number mean)?
The slope tells us what the speed is and how to graph the different points on the graph. In this case the speed and the slope are the same thing.
Question 3: could you use this equation to predict anything? If so, what?
You can use this equation to predict the time and the distance traveled by the car. Since you know what the slope is, and you know what the y-intercept is, and if you know at least one of the x or y values, it's pretty simple to then use algebra and figure out the other value.
Question 4: Why did you decide to do the procedure the way that you did?
At the time it seemed like the easiest way to reach the goal: finding out the speed of the car we were given. It was easier to measure how long the car took to reach the end of a meter stick than to try to figure out how far the car went in a certain amount of time. We had to measure each distance three times in order to get accurate data. This is explained in more detail above, but you can't just measure it once and assume that you got it right. You have to measure it again and again and find the average so that you have the best chance of narrowing down your possible times to be more accurate.
Looking at the graph, you see a straight line. This tells me that the "buggy" is moving in a constant speed. It will always move .42 meters every second. It also moves in a positive direction as it starts at the origin and moves away.
Question 2: What does the slope of this line tell you (what does that number mean)?
The slope tells us what the speed is and how to graph the different points on the graph. In this case the speed and the slope are the same thing.
Question 3: could you use this equation to predict anything? If so, what?
You can use this equation to predict the time and the distance traveled by the car. Since you know what the slope is, and you know what the y-intercept is, and if you know at least one of the x or y values, it's pretty simple to then use algebra and figure out the other value.
Question 4: Why did you decide to do the procedure the way that you did?
At the time it seemed like the easiest way to reach the goal: finding out the speed of the car we were given. It was easier to measure how long the car took to reach the end of a meter stick than to try to figure out how far the car went in a certain amount of time. We had to measure each distance three times in order to get accurate data. This is explained in more detail above, but you can't just measure it once and assume that you got it right. You have to measure it again and again and find the average so that you have the best chance of narrowing down your possible times to be more accurate.