Pyramid Lab

The big question:

 

1. What pattern do you observe regarding the relationship between force and distance in a simple machine? 

2. How can force be manipulated using a simple machine?

How we went about investigating the big questions: 

My group and I used a force probe to measure the amount of force it took to pull a 7.5 kg cart up a ramp. For trial one, we began pulling the cart up from where thermal met the edge of the table. For trial 2, we readjusted the position of the ramp on  the books to make the angle larger and again pulled the cart up the ramp. We recorded our results for each trial. Our results were as follows: 

                    Trial 1        Trial 2       Trial 3

Force            .544N       .836N       .646N

Distance        1.29m      1.04m       1.12m

Area              .70176      .86944      .732352

We made bar graphs for each trial and calculated the area. To find the area, we used A=fd. The area is also the same as work. 

Answer to the big question:

We found that the answer to the big question of the relationship between force and distance was an inverse relationship. This means that as force increases, distance decreases and the opposite. E learned that force times distance is the constant of work. Work doesn't change as you change the distance of the ramp used to get to that height.

Evidence to support conclusions: 

The force from trial one was .544 N, but it went up to .836 N for trial 2. The distance also changed from 1.29 m in trial one and 1.04 m in trial 2, so the force went up and the distance went down. This proves the inverse relationship.

How we can use what we learned: We can use the equation force X distance= work to solve problems substituting the values we know in order to find other concepts such as height. 

How this relates outside of class: 

This relates to construction and the building of things because various simple machines are used to lift objects up to big heights. We could find the amount of force it takes a machine to lift an object a certain distance. We could then check our results with with what we found, and the results should show the inverse relationship.