Thursday 30 December 2010

Awesome science experiment

My little lass' science homework was an experiment where you tie an elastic band between two chair legs and use it to launch a toy car across the kitchen floor. You had to pull the car a bit further back each time and write down the results, which were as follows:

Stretch/distance travelled (centimetres):
3 - 9
4 - 15
5 -23
6 -39
7 -44
8 -65
9 -89
10 - 104
11 - 119
12 - 150
13 - 172
14 - 207
15 - 226

I admit that we did a tiny little bit of applied climate science and redid two or three of the tests to get the readings to fit the model, but they still filled my mathematically minded heart with joy.

14 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

I think I need a graph.

Anonymous said...

GRAPHS ARE FOR SQUARES

Robin Smith said...

Looks like you did a bit of climate denial dissonance too and ignored observed facts.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, you snuck in a maths joke. Awesome.

RS, if the car whizzed off to one side and crashed into the breakfast bar we did those again. We only measured straight line journeys.

View from the Solent said...

Hmm. Cherry-picking the results, eh? Is the plot a hockey stick?

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, if you plot x squared against x, then yes, you get a hockey stick.

Lola said...

Lovely.

Best practical we ever did was to build ballister/trebuchet. They asked us to throw a ping-pong ball 10ft (I think). Ours thew a golf ball across the garden. I was dissauded from 'helping' make the MK2 which was designed to throw a half brick....Happy days...

Lola said...

Thinking about it, why is it that blokes like this sort of thing? And notice it? And more blokes than women in my experience. How have we gone from caveman to Engineer? Curiosity?

Bill Quango MP said...

Lola: master Quango,aged 2, uses his ride on Thomas the tank engine as a portable ladder. He keeps it from rolling by placing a teddy bear in front and another behind. Then up to the worktop and helps himself to any biscuits or apples he can find.

Ms Quango, at the same age, decorated her ride on with flowers.

Just the way the brain is wired.
She could read 'three pigs' at two and a half.
He just laughs like a maniac at the picture of the wolf in the same book.

Lola said...

BQMP - best laugh I've had all day....

dearieme said...

"How have we gone from caveman to Engineer?" Some cavemen were engineers: consider the woomera or the come-back boomerang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)

View from the Solent said...

I missed the ;-) previously, sorry.

On a more serious note. "little lass" implies a fairly young person. I'm surprised, pleasantly surprised, that her school is introducing her to proper science, involving measurement, so young. And Hooke's Law is a good one for this. Maybe all is not lost.

Bearing in mind the friction involved, the results you both got are amazing. I hope it doesn't spoil her for the future, when things don't work out as expected.

James Higham said...

Physics still being taught, is it?

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, JH, she's 8 but we send her to a private school where they still teach some 'stuff' (along with a fair bit of five-a-day and climate-change tomfoolery).

VFTS, but why does the friction matter? if there were no friction, the car would have travelled an infinite distance each time.