Problem: Will different mass marbles affect how far the block is moved, and will it affect how far the marble bounces back after impact?
Hypothesis: I think the marble with the biggest mass will move the object the farthest distance and it will go the least distance after impact because it has the biggest mass so it will have the most force and it has the most inertia so it will go the least distance after impact.
External Variables: One thing I did to eliminate external variables was I used a block to keep the marble perfectly still until I removed the block and sent it rolling down the track. This eliminates the possibility of one of the marbles being already in motion when I send it down the ramp. I also marked where I put the block so I don't put the block in different places. I also taped down the track to prevent it from moving and changing the incline.
Experiment Results:My hypothesis was partially correct because the large marble definitely moved the block the farthest but it was the small marble that went the least distance after impact. It went zero inches after impact every single test. The bouncy ball had extremely scattered results with some bouncing off the block and going backwards or it would jump the block and roll very far away. The best test was the large marble when it pushed the block almost 6 inches. The small marble never went anywhere after impact, literally it went zero inches every single test.The bouncy ball one time went from going -2 inches to 16 inches.
Procedure- So to start off my experiment I got together everything I needed. Then I taped down my track and marked the block and the track so I could line them up in the exact same place every trial. After that I set up the meter stick where the zero inch mark was next to the line on the track. Placing the block on the track I send down the marble. I then record the distance the block was pushed and how far the marble went after impact. After this I repeat this experiment three more times per type of ball.
See story.
Gravity/Friction Experiment-
Problem- Will a different weight and size ball land sooner than the marble due to air resistance, or will gravity pull the larger affect on the basketball?
Hypothesis- I think that the balls, no matter what weight or size, will land at the exact same time due to air resistance.
Conclusion: The balls landed at the exact same time every single time. There are several reasons for this. The first and most obvious one is the fact that a basketball is bigger so I has to push more air out of the way and has more air resistance. The other is that the more mass an object has the harder gravity pulls on it but it also has more inertia, and so resists movement more. It's these resistances that balance out gravity's extra pull on the basketball and make them land at the exact same time every single trial. I based this experiment off the one Galileo did on the Leaning Tower of Piza.
External Variables: We lined up both the balls on the same point but there is still the good chance that they weren't at the exact level when they were dropped. Another variable that we cannot control was the timing of the release. Humans aren't perfect so their is no way that we can drop them at the exact same time. We would need a robot for that. I am including a video recording of the balls in place of my data table. There isn't a whole lot to report on this experiment because the marble and the basketball landed at the exact same moment every single time. There was 0.00 seconds between impact.
Procedure- Just like every experiment, I started off by gathering everything I needed. Then I found two points of reference that were at the exact same height. In this instance they were locks on lockers. I then started recording the video while my partner set up the balls. Then on the count of three he dropped them. I repeated this three times.
5th: Proficiency-
Dear Ron Johnson,
Imagine a wold with no life. Nothing moves in this barren, desolate world except the wind sweeping over the plains. The sun doesn't break the oily black clouds, casting an eternal twilight on the world. This is where the world is heading. Our dependence on fossil fuels will be the death of us, but we have a chance to change everything with alternative sources of energy like solar power.
Solar power is energy converted from the Sun's light power. Special panels are used to harness the light and convert it into electricity. The panels are quiet expensive because the materials in the panels are difficult to obtain and not many companies mine for them. I believe government tax breaks on the companies that make the panels could help lower the price and encourage people to go green and buy the panels. The panels create no harmful pollutants like smoke or sludge. It's this part of the solar panels that make them so great. If we all got solar panels pollution rates would plummet.
Solar panels can simply be attached on top of houses or other buildings. In some large deserts, there can be entire solar farms. Some people may doubt solar panels because not all days are sunny, but that's what the other forms of alternate are for. Solar power is the mos affective of the alternate forms of energy because of it's versatility and effectiveness. This is why we need to get rid of fossil fuels and depend on other forms of energy otherwise we will doom this planet.
Rube Goldberg- Our Rube Goldberg starts out with potential gravitational energy in the lever. When the potential energy is released when we cut the string in transforms into kinetic energy. The marbles also have potential gravitational energy when it balances on the pole. The kinetic energy from the lever is transferred into the marbles as they are knock into the screw and down the inclined planes. Some of the kinetic energy is lost to thermal energy due to friction. The windmill's potential kinetic energy is released when the marbles kinetic energy pulls on the pulley and on the windmill.
Speed and Acceleration-
Problem- Do different mass marbles affect the speed and acceleration when going down a 25 inch ramp?
Hypothesis- I think the smallest marble will have the greatest acceleration, but the largest marble will have the highest speed.
Conclusion- The data is quite scattered because being human I can't stop the timer at the exact moment at which the ball crosses the end line. Still most of the data points to the marble having the greatest speed and acceleration. So my hypothesis was partially correct but partially wrong. I think the marble has the highest acceleration because it has the least inertia. If this is true then the golf ball should have the least acceleration because it has the greatest inertia but this isn't true for some reason in my results. The marble had the highest speed with a speed of 31.3 in/s. The bouncy ball had the lowest speed with a speed of 25 in/s.
External variables- I don't think this experiment is very accurate for several reasons. Mostly because even though I have good reflexes I can't stop the timer at the exact moment. Also some of the marbles may have been moving already when I started the timer instead of being still. I did multiple trials because I knew with my luck something freaky like this would happen, but I didn't expect it to be as consistent as this. Maybe it is a freak thing or I was just totally wrong.
Procedure- Gathering all materials is always the first step. I then taped my track down. After that I got the marble at a dead stop on top of the track. Starting the timer I let the marble roll down the track and stopped it when it got to the end. I repeated this experiment three more times for each type of ball.
Story:
Author's Note: This is a story of a boy who gets kidnapped and put into the slave trade and he uses his knowledge of the proficiencies to help him try to escape. I've been trying to write a fiction story and I figured this would be good practice. I took some names from places in northern Wisconsin near my cabin because I couldn't think of real enough sounding names by myself. It's a work in progress.
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Part One: The Capture
Maybe I'm a little too adventurous. I've gotten myself into quite a jam here and I don't know how to get out. I'm on board a ship heading for China and, well the cage they put me in isn't exactly comfortable. With no weapons and no means for escape, I'm sunk. Let me fill you in on exactly how I got here.
My name's Chris and I'm 16. My parents are always traveling to remote places all over the world. They take me with them. I speak about 19 different languages and can understand another four. I've got experience in just about everything. I have a black belt in judo, karate, tae kwon do, and tai chi. My parents made me so experienced in martial arts because often times I'm watching out for myself while they are off exploring. They also taught me how to use just about every weapon in the book. I think they might be FBI agents but truthfully I don't know exactly what they do but it must be important.
When I was kidnapped we were in a remote village in Brazil called Sheshebagama (SHEE SHEE BAGAMA). My parents were busy bartering for a guide to take them deep into the Amazon. Exactly what for, I'm still not sure, but I was just leaning against a house watching the goings on when I saw someone taking pictures of me. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I DON'T like people taking pictures of me. So I chased him into an alley and tried interrogating him. He didn't respond even though I knew I was speaking the right language. He started making these weird hand signals but they weren't sign language so I wasn't quite sure what I was doing till I turned around and saw that picture boy had a couple friends... with knives.
5 v 1 in a dark alley, and all of the five were pulling out knives. Kicking picture boy between the legs hard enough to knock him, out I grabbed his knife and turned just in time to see what looked to be the leader charging me. Part of Newton's first law is that "an object in motion will stay in motion unless an outside force acts upon it". I was going to use this to my advantage. Using one of the most simple tai chi moves in the book, I dodged his knife stab and used one forearm to it his thighs and on hand on his chest as a guide I used his own momentum to flip him. The hard packed earth was the unbalanced force that stopped him from moving. I think that fall cracked a couple ribs. The rest of the goons surrounded me and began stabbing and slashing with their knives. I ducked under the first attack grabbed the still outstretched arm of one of the goons and slammed my fist into his armpit knocking him out.
Still whirling and trying to incapacitate my opponents, I felt something strike me in the upper arm. Looking down I saw a blow-dart embedded in my arm, probably tipped with some type of poison. Grrr, I hate snipers, they're so cheap like in Modern Warfare Two, those stupid campers.The last thing I saw before everything went hazy was a man waving a blow-gun in front of my nose laughing.
Well here I am, still on this stinking ship surrounded by other kids, most of whom are younger than me. They still have some fight in them though. One guard was trying to drag a boy of about 15 into the cage next to me one the boy spit in his eyes. Swearing profusely, the guard roughly shoved the boy into the cage where we looked at each other and burst out laughing. The guard lumbered away still cursing under his breath. I asked the kid his name and he said it was Matt. He said he was from New York, which worried me because that meant that whoever kidnapped us had a very large organization. From New York to Brazil? This could get interesting.
While these thugs were transporting us they also made us work. We were either sowing shirts or making cigars. With no breaks and whips cracking down on us if we slowed or stopped, we had no choice but to do as told. I was just trying to gather information about these guys that could help me and Matt escape. We would try to get everyone out but the odds of that are very slim. I was talking to some of the younger kids who had been here a long time, and they were saying that the thugs called themselves Los Jefes del Fuego. In English it means The Bosses of Fire. I thought it was interesting name due to the fact that it showed they were either from Mexico or somewhere in Latin America. They could be from Spain but the area that they were kidnapping people said otherwise.
I tried bribing one of the guards with some money I found in my pocket but he just took it and laughed at me. I figured this would happen so that's why I only gave him three dollars. The poor sap can't count. Because bribing him didn't work, I decided to try to befriend him. He only looked to be around twenty or so. As I was talking to him, I found out that he had just joined this gang and still wasn't quite sure what was going on. After about an hour of conversing (in Spanish) I thanked him and started relaying what I had found out to Matt, who thought this gang could be one of the huge drug cartels that was just expanding it's area of business. I thought that this could be very likely but didn't know for certain.
This guard and I soon became good friends and he started telling me about his old life before he joined the gang, in Acapulco. His name is Federico but everyone calls him Fede. Fede said it was very violent back in Mexico, with the gangs always killing police officers and even just innocent bystanders. He was just trying to get away by joining the gang. He didn't know he'd be doing stuff like this. I felt really bad for him but there wasn't exactly a whole lot I could do for him in my position. Well.... if Matt and I tried to escape, maybe we could take Fede with us. I'd have to talk to Matt about this, but the more I thought about it, the better the idea became.
I could tell that we were getting closer to China because looking out the tiny little porthole I could see the Indonesian islands. Having been to the majority of these islands, I knew that between these islands were huge rock bars that could sink even the toughest ship. I hoped the captain of this floating turd didn't know this, because this could be exactly what Matt, Fede, and I need to escape.
Part Two: The Escape
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!
Wow, loud noises seem very loud if they wake you up. I literally jumped off the floor of my cell. The ship must have hit one of the reefs between the islands. Looking at my cell door I see that one of the bolts looked really loose. Newton's second law states the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. Mass x Acceleration= Force. So I'm not very big so I'm going to need a lot of acceleration to break that bolt. Going as far back as possible in my cage, and sprinting into the bars on the far side, I think some serious damage to my shoulder. Ow. Note to self: metal bars are hard. Bracing myself I tried again and to my pleasure the door sprung open.
Rushing over I pry up Matt's cage and woke up Fede who was somehow still sleeping. Explaining to them the situation, we sprint around a corner and come to a dead end. Looking at Fede for a little help, he started leading us towards the exit. As we approach the final turn we heard a lot of noise. Peeking my head around a corner I saw a guard about fifty feet away looking right at me. Screaming at the others to run, I start pounding down the hallway looking for somewhere to hide. Choosing an side passage at random I dive in, and hope that the guard doesn't hear and or see us. To my surprise, as I look back I see the guard only a couple feet behind me.
Spotting something I could use to give this guy a serious headache, I start making a beeline for it. I looks like a giant rubber band, but I could still use this to get rid of this goon. Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Charging full speed into the rubber band thing, I turned around to face my little friend. Looking right into his eyes I see realization dawn on him as I shoot out of the gigantic sling shot and level him. I retrace my steps and run free into the world. Finally the world seems like a much more friendly place, with my two new friends at my side and being free from the tyranny of the slave trade.
