October 26, 2005
Today was a really fun project. The students had the task of building
a simple car and putting a sail on it. The students had to
test how far the car would travel with the sail and how far
it would travel without the sail. To be scientifically accurate,
the students did each run 3 times.
The sail was not designed to make the car go faster,
but rather to give the car wind resistance.
The students would drive their car off of a ramp. By using the
wooden planks in the floor, they counted how many spaces
it traveled. After counting, the students recorded their data.
In the end, we found that the cars, no matter what design was used, traveled
much faster without the sail. The 3 trial runs for each were added
together then divided by 3 to find the average. The largest difference between
with a sail and without a sail was 10.
