Race+Car+Tracks

Sara and Caroline

__**Title:**__ Race Car Tracks

__**Lab Goal:**__ How does the amount of work change as a race car goes down an incline and through a loop? Also how much work is needed for a race car to make it through the loop?

__**Materials**__
-Eight Hot Wheels orange track pieces -Masking tape. -Racecar -Video camera -LoggerPro

__**Procedure:**__ __**A. Constructing the Track:**__ 1. Gather above materials 2. Take two of the eight tracks and connect them where they meet with masking tape (do not have them over lap one another, just next to each other) 3. Connect your third track to one end of the first two, tape together like said above. 4. Still with the third track only, take this and bend it into the shape of the loop you desire (our loop was about 17 cm tall.) 5. Connect a fourth track to the end of the loop, the same way done with tracks one and two. 6. At this point five pieces should be connected, and a complete track has been created. 7. Once entire track is made, tape the first track on the wall, how ever many centimeters you wish. (our first trail was about 40 cm from the ground) 8. Also tape the loop and remaining tracks that are on the floor, to the floor. So it doesn’t move during you experiment. 9. Take one of your many selected objects and place at the top of your race track.

__**B. Testing the Track:**__ 1. Open up LoggerPro on your computer. 2. One partner should be standing near the top of the track, ready to drop the car. While the other is ready to record the experiment. Partner with camera should start recording, while partner with race-car first holds a meter-stick vertically up to the start of the track then drops the car on the track. 3. Watch car to see if it makes through the loop successfully. If so get ready to user LoggerPro to find data. If not add another track piece to top of track and test again, keep repeating this until car makes it successfully through the loop. 4. After successfully making the car through the loop, upload video into LoggerPro. Once it is uploaded, set scale on video and then use the dot tool, clicking the moving car in each frame so Logger Pro can calculate the necessary data correctly. 5. Once this has been done, set up equations by adding calculated columns in LoggerPro for Kinetic Energy, Potential Energy and calculated velocity. 6. Pick three points on your track to collect data from. ( We picked the starting point, a middle point before the car enters the loop, and then the point where the car is at its maximum height in the loop) 7. With these three points data, you can now calculate the work done at each point, compare and contrast at the information and form a conclusion. 8. Go through these same steps on Logger Pro for all trials, to be able to compare and contrast your results.

__**Data/Calculations:**__

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 * __Trial 1:__**

0.148J - 0.11J = 0.038J 0.11J - 0.026J = 0.084J
 * || **Kinetic Energy** || **Potential Energy** || **Total Energy**
 * (KE+PE)** ||
 * **Point 1** || 0.004J || 0.144J || 0.148J ||
 * **Point 2** || 0.087J || 0.023J || 0.11J ||
 * **Point 3** || 0.005J || 0.021J || 0.026J ||
 * Work being done between point 1 and point 2: **
 * Work being done between point 2 and point 3:**

Below is a picture of our set up for trial one and the points we used __**Trial 2:**__ 0.234J - 0.218J = 0.016J 0.218J - 0.047J = 0.171J
 * || **Kinetic Energy** || **Potential**
 * Energy** || **Total Energy**
 * (KE+PE)** ||
 * **Point 1** || 0.008J || 0.226J || 0.234J ||
 * **Point 2** || 0.121J || 0.097J || 0.218J ||
 * **Point 3** || 0.010J || 0.037J || 0.047J ||
 * Work being done between point 1 and point 2:**
 * Work being done between point 2 and point 3:**

Below is a picture of our set-up for trail two and the points we used. Below are two links to our total data for both trials, the points we used are highlighted in yellow.

**__Conclusion:__**

After conducting two trials in our lab, we found that in our first trial there was not enough work done to make the race car go around the loop. We thought that the reason may be because the incline was not high enough; we needed more potential energy to make the car go through the loop. To make sure there was enough work being done in our second trial we increased the height of the incline from 43 cm. to 83 cm. by adding another track. Once we did this and collected our data we found that there was enough work being done to get it all the way around the loop and through the end of the track. When looking at the actual experiment and calculations, it is obvious that the send trail worked for two reasons. The first reason being that the car actually made it through the race track successfully and the second being that much more work was accomplished. In our first trial we had .084 J of work; this obviously was not enough because in our second trial we found that there was 0.171 J of work being done. We also concluded from our calculations and data that in both trials the amount of work increases after it goes down the incline. For example in trial two the work being done between point one and two is 0.016 J and then the work being done between points two and three is 0.171 J. In all it is necessary for the amount of work to increase in order for the race car to go around a loop.