Week 4: Rider Weight and Swings

  

 Week 4: Rider Weight and Swings

Big Q of the Week:

The big questions that we are investigating is what affects a riders speed when going down the slide, and why do things fall at different rates, and our investigative question was does wind affect the objects time to swing back and forth. We revisited our learning from last week during our investigations on factors that affect a riders speed down a slide. The forces that are acting on a rider as they go down a slide is gravity, friction, and the surface. We noticed that when the rider was in motion, the object was experiencing the force of the slide which is the surface, and that can affect the speed of the rider. Then, we looked at the rate at which objects fall. We first investigated the rate of a piece of paper falling compared to a tennis ball, to no surprise the tennis ball won. Then, we crumpled the piece of paper into a ball the size of the tennis ball and found that the balls were close to falling at the same time. Finally, we crumpled the paper tightly and found that the balls dropped at the same exact time. This is due to the amount of air that is dragging on the object. If there is no air drag, the objects will always fall at the same rate. However, depending on the mass of the object, gravity will pull harder on the object which makes it harder to accelerate. These factors equal out exactly which is why the crumpled paper and the tennis ball fell at the same rate. Finally, we looked at if wind affects an objects time to swing back and forth. We set up a swing with a washe and placed a fan 50 cm infront of the swing. Through four trials of swinging the washers with and without wind, we found that there was no significant change in the objects swinging time. 

Our Swing Model

Learning in Lecture: 

This week in lecture we learned about forces and energy as it relates to swings. During lab we investigated different factors that affect swings such as weight, length of rope, the environment it is in, etc. Revisiting Newton's first and second laws, gravity pulls harder on more massive objects and more massive objects are harder to accelerate, therefore these factors cancel out meaning that weight does not effect a swing. Then we discusses the length of the rope and how it changes the period of the swing. Energy cannot be created or destroyed and is transferred from one system to another. Looking at the energy of a swing, gravitational energy is converted to kinetic energy, and then back again. The longer the rope is, the longer it takes for the swing to go back and forth. The forces that act on a swing is gravity and energy. 

Swing Data Table

Textbook Connections 

1. In this chapter I learned the factors that affect a pendulum swinging back and forth. A pendulum has potential and kinetic energy, potential energy is seen at the beginning and end of each period that the pendulum swings. Kinetic energy is shown at the lowest point in the pendulums swing. As the pendulum is swinging downward, the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. Then, as the pendulum swings upward, that energy is converted back into potential energy. The pressbook used an example of a wrecking ball hitting a building to show the energy transfer. The most destructive point in the wrecking balls swing is at the bottom where the wrecking ball has the most kinetic energy. Then, it discussed factors that affect the period of a pendulum such as weight, string length, and angle of release. Through our in class experiments and the online PhET simulation, we discovered that weight does not affect the period of the pendulum, however the angle of release for longer periods and a longer string does make a difference. Another example of pendulums in real life is a clock. Galileo noticed that a chandelier would swing back and forth the same amount of time even if the angle changed. When the pendulum clock was created, time became accurate within fifteen seconds. 

2. I think the most helpful part of this chapter was the real life example of the wrecking ball and the PhET simulation. The wrecking ball helped me visualize the impact of pendulums along with the transfer of potential to kinetic energy in real life. I also appreciated the ability to manipulate different factors of a pendulum within the PhET simulation. I could see first-hand how weight had no impact on the periods but angle of release and length of the string did. 

3.  I would like to learn more about the first pendulum clock and Galileos discoveries. I think it is interesting to see the evolution of the clock and how time was accurately discovered through pendulums. This seems like a fascinating topic that I want to do more research on. 

4. One question that I am still confused with is how the angle of release does not affect the period from smaller angles but for larger angles it does. 

Data as a Graph


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