Alex+K+and+Patrick+W+Car+Crashers

Patrick W and Alex K

GOAL: Determine the safety of a collision with different barriers on cars on an inclied plane.

PROCEDURE: 1) Place the track on a 6 degree angle. 2) Place the barrier at the bottom of the track. 3) Set up Logger Pro to record for Velocity vs. Time graph. 4) Place the car 50 cm from barrier and release while recording with Logger Pro. 5) Record the initial and final velocities before and after the collision 6) Repeat with different barriers 7) Calculate the forces of all the barriers using Ft = M(Delta V)

LAB MATERIALS: 1) Car 2) Track 3) Brick 4) Motion detector 5) Rubberband 6) Magnetic stopper 7) Clamps

CONCLUSION: Due to the brick exerting the least net force and having the longest collision time, it is safest for a car to crash into a brick compared to a magnet or rubber band. The way we analyzed this was by using Logger Pro, an inclined track, a scale size car, and three different stoppers to determine the impulse experienced by the car. Then we found the force that each barrier exerts on the car to determine the safety of each collision. We found the Force exerted by the magnet to be -2.44 Newton’s. We did this by finding the change in momentum (-.366), which is equal to the impulse. Then since we knew time, we could plug it in to solve for force and we got -2.44N. We repeated the same procedure for both the rubber band and brick. We found the force exerted by the rubber band to be -1.48N and the force for the brick to be -.79N, henceforth the brick is the safest barrier to crash into. This makes sense because if you crash into a brick, your car will crumple up and would take a relatively long time to affect the driver, however when you crash into a magnet or rubber band, your car is immediately flung back, which could cause severe injuries concussion or whiplash. In our lab’s graph, you can see the magnet (red) and rubber band (green) both fling the car backwards while the brick (blue) makes it come to a complete stop.



you fail at boxes...