Toy Buggy Chicken

The two toy buggies are facing each other and planning to play a game of chicken. They each want to figure out how much time they can drive at one another before they crash so they can swerve out of the way at the last second possible. You know how fast the cars travel based on the activity that was done before this and you also know that the two cars will be placed 500 cm apart from one another.

Directions: Partner with a different group then you partnered with before (make sure the group you partner with does not have the same color car as your group). Use the information from the data you recorded and the group you’re working with to answer the following questions below.

CAR / Starting Position / Equation for Car / Group Members
A / 0 cm
B / 500 cm
  1. Create a function table for each car using your equations.

Time(x) / Distance(y)
0
5
10
15
20
25

Car ACar B

Time(x) / Distance(y)
0
5
10
15
20
25
  1. Graph the points from your function table and draw in the line-of-best-fit. Make sure to label the lines “Car A” and “Car B” and the point of intersection as the “Crash”.
  1. From the graph, give the crash point for car A and the crash point for car B.
  1. What do you notice about the crash points for both cars? Write a sentence to explain what you noticed.
  1. Write down the equation for car A and for car B and solve the system of equations algebraically. Show your work.
  1. Compare the answer that you got in question 6 to the answer you found in question 4.
  1. Test your solutions by crashing the cars into each other. Assign roles to members in your group as you did in the previous activity and collect data on three trial runs. In the last row, average the data from the three trials.

Time of Crash / Position of Crash
Trail 1
Trial 2
Trial 3
Average Result
  1. What are some of the factors that may have caused your actual results to differ from your predicted result?
  1. What ways could you redesign the data collection and crash test to provide a closer result?
  1. What does it mean to say that your predicted result is a solution of the system of equations?
  1. Why are the values for time and position the same for both cars when they collide?