Naomi Yankellow
Kamilla Abdurakhmanov
Pd: 06
5/15/14
Scientific Explanation
A concept that we learned in class was friction. We learned that friction is the force that opposes the relative motion of two surfaces in contact. This means that friction can slow objects in motion down. Friction is what will slow and eventually stop the car. But, it will also occur not only between the wheels and the floor but between the axle and the wheel. This is the reason for the axles to be longer. When the axles are longer, there is more room for the wheels to move so there wouldn’t be a lot of friction produced. If the wheels can move more easily, then they would roll better along the board. We found that the car traveled a farther distance when the wheels rolled along the board instead of sliding which all lead down to because there was less friction due to longer axles.
Although we can reduce friction by longer axels, there will still always be some. There are types of frictions we would rather get though. Sliding friction is when two solid surfaces slide over each other. Rolling friction is when an object rolls across a surface. Sliding friction is what causes the wheels to stop on a bike but in this case we need the opposite. We need the car to keep rolling so sliding friction wouldn’t be the friction we want to get. Rolling friction isn’t either but it is however better than sliding friction.
But, rolling friction is easier to overcome than sliding friction. It is important to engineers for designing certain products to have this friction. They usually use ball bearings to reduce friction by rolling between moving parts. In our case, we attempted making the axels longer to see if this will help because the wheel will have more room to roll and therefore will roll across the board instead of sliding, because sliding friction will cause the car to stop. It did make a difference in the investigation because the distance the car traveled from the end of the inclined plane increased.
Bibliography
1) "Mousetrap Cars." Http://mesa.ucop.edu/staff/masme_2010/WORKSHOPS/Mousetrap_Madness/Mousetrap_Car.pdf. Web.
2) "Login." Login. Web. 19 May 2014