Inclined Plane Lab - 36 &  37

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Today we completed a lab over inclined planes.  The students were trying to decide if the height of a ramp affects the distance a car will travel. 

Students were given 1 matchbox car, 1 board (ramp), 3 textbooks, and a tape measure. 

They had to build a ramp with 1 book and test the ramp three times.  Then they constructed a ramp with 2 books and tested it three times.  Finally they constructed a ramp with 3 books and tested it three times.  Each time recording their data.

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As an analysis of their data I let them choose if they wanted to graph the average distance traveled for each of the different ramp heights or if they wanted to graph the farthest trial for each height.

As a conclusion I had them answer the following three questions below their graph.
1. At which height did the car travel the farthest?
2. What force was acting on the car in each trial?
3. What force caused the object to stop?




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