Marble Investigation

Hello people who strangely like to see science experiments,
     There are two main factors that affect a object's motion, speed and mass. As speed increases or mass, the object will carry more force with it. An example can be that a truck has more mass and a car has less mass, so the truck will have more force, but if the car is faster than the truck, there is a possibility that the car will carry more force. This thinking can also be related to momentum, the main idea that is being learned in class.
     Our aim in this investigation was to see how the height affects the force that the marble inficts. We were looking for the main factors that affect the movement of an object and how the height could affect the movement if velocity and mass are the main factors of motion.
     Our hypothesis is that the height will affect the distance the car moves because we think it will have more speed and consequently more momentum.
     Our Independent Variable was the height from which the marble started going down and the Dependent Variable was the distance the physics car moved after the marble hit it. The Controls were the height of the books  to level the car so that the marble could enter it, the type and length of wooden rulers, the same type of surface, and the same physics car and cup.
     Our list of materials were the following:

1. Two wooden meter sticks;
2. One 30cm ruler;
3. One physics car;
4. One translucent medium-sized marble;
5. One "Forces and Motion" book;
6. White tape;
7. Seven "Chemistry" textbooks;

     The procedure used in the investigation was the following:

1. Place two chemistry book, one on top of the other as a starting height for the marble;
2. Place a chemistry book and a "Forces and Motion" book on the other end, separated by the two meter sticks one parallel to the other with a small gap between them;
3. Place the physics car with the cup taped on top of it on the end that has the "Forces and Motion" and chemistry books;
4. Place a ruler horizontally by the side of the car to be used to measure the distance the car moved when the marble hits it in the cup;
5. Place the marble on the small gap between the meter sticks and use it as a rail;
6. Let the marble go and record the distance the car moved on a paper or a document using the ruler place horizontally by the side of the physics car;
7. Do five trials for each height which you will change by adding more and more chemistry books on the end that has two chemistry books, where you let the marble slide through the rail and fall in the car;

Height	Trial 1	Trial 2	Trial 3	Trial 4	Trial 5	Average
7.5cm	1	1.5	1	1.5	1.5	1.3
11cm	4	3.5	4	4	3.5	3.8
15cm	6	5.5	6	5.5	6	5.8
18.5cm	13	12.5	14	11	12	12.5
22cm	25.5	23	19	22	27	23.3

 

   
 The observations made by me and my group during this investigation were many. We noticed that the more height, the faster the marble fell and the farther the car went. We also noticed that the marble sometimes went so fast it fell out of the cup.
     In the end of this investigation we concluded that the more height, the greater the distance that the car moves, so our hypothesis was correct. As you can see in the table above, from 7.5cm to 11cm (which is one book difference), the distance that the car moved increase in 2-3cm, which is a clear factor that shows that the height did change the distance the car moved.
     We can relate these results to momentum because the more the height, the more velocity, and the more velocity, the more momentum an object will have. As the marble dropped from a higher height will have more momentum, the car will move farther, proving our theory that the height affects the distance that the car moved correct.
     Our experiment could have been biased because of some probable errors. One of these errors is that the surface in which we worked with had some cracks and rougher parts, which could have affected the movement of the car. Another error could have been that the gap between the meter sticks weren't constant, that could have made the marble go faster or slower than it would have normally been. The third and last error was that on the last trials we did, the marble fell out of the cup, that could have caused a loss of force that would be used to push the car.
     To fix these errors we just had to change simple things. To fix the surface cracks we could have just changed the surface and used another surface to conduct the experiment. To fix the distance between the meter sticks we could measure the distance between them with another ruler. Finally, to fix the marble getting out of the cup problem, we could get a longer cup where the marble wouldn't have enough knock back to go all the way to the cup's end and to its fall.
     The teamwork in our team was something I thought worked out pretty well because we separated the tasks equally for all the people in our group, so that everyone could do something and that they could get involved and understand the topic. I learned that the more height, there will be more speed and the speed is a main factor of momentum.
     Thank you very much for reading and following our experiment to discover momentum and its mysteries. We can use momentum in many situations in life, specially in collision as in car crashes and human bumps. Please watch the video that follows...