Hot Wheel Acceleration Lab

Name Gabby

Whited Per 4

Objective

To analyze the movement of a car that is accelerating.

Materials

Ramp, textbooks, meter stick, camera, Logger Pro software, tape

Procedures
Collect Data

1. Put textbooks (4 is a good number) under one side of the

ramp.
2. Designate someone to catch the toy car, before it hits the
floor.
3. Set up camera so that camera is at the same angle as
the ramp and can view the entire ramp and does not
move.
i. IMPORTANT film your car from left to right!!!!!!!
4. Put a ruler or meter stick in the view of the camera
5. Have someone start recording on the camera
6. Have someone release toy car at the top of the ramp
7. Stop recording when car reaches end of the ramp

Analyze Data

1. Bring up Logger Pro

2. Go to Insert on top menu, Then Movie, select your movie
3. Make your film display larger.
4.

Click button on lower right corner of the movie to

bring out the side menu

5.

set the scale in the movie, drag over the meter stick,
and then record it as 1 m in the dialog.
6. Find the spot in the movie where the car is released
7.

select add point then click on one spot of the car

until the whole car path is traced.
8. Go to Data, then Delete Column, then y
9. Go to Analyze then select Tangent, move your cursor
over your data line and note the slope (the speed of your
car) Now go and use this data to answer questions 1
through 4 in the Results section.
10.
Command a the graph and data table, copy it and
then paste it into this document after Distance vs Time
graph heading.

11.
Switch y axis from x (m) to x velocity by clicking on
x (m) and switching to the second option. Your new graph
should look linear.
12.
Go to Analyze and select Linear Fit the slope of
this line is your cars acceleration.
13.
Command a the graph and data table, copy it and
then paste it into this document after the Velocity vs
Time graph heading.

Data
Distance vs Time graph:

Velocity vs Time graph:

Results
Dont forget units!
1. What speed did your car start at? 15cm/s At what time?
1.55 s
2. What speed did your car end at? 66cm/s At what time?
2.1 s
3. What was the change in your cars speed? My cars speed
increased by 51cm/s.
4. How long did it take for your car to go from its starting
speed to its ending speed? 0.55 s

5. What was your cars acceleration (change in speed divided

by time)? 92cm/s/s
6. Compare the acceleration to the slope of your Velocity vs
Time graph are your numbers close? The acceleration of
the slope of my Velocity vs Time graph was 74cm/s/s and
when I calculated the acceleration I got 92cm/s/s. The
numbers were pretty close.

Conclusion

1. As the car went further down the ramp what did you notice
happen to the points that you added to the video to mark
the car? Every time a point was added to the video to mark
the car they kept getting higher and farther away from the
firs dot. After I marked all the points on the car, the points
formed a line that showed that the car was accelerating
and increasing speed.
2. Explain what the acceleration means that you found in the
results. My car accelerated 92cm/s every second, at 1
second the car was going 92cm/s, and at 2 seconds the car
was going 184cm/s.
3. Explain the curved line shown on the distance vs. time
graph. My distance vs time graph was supposed to have a
steep curved line but my video wasnt very good so the
line appeared to be an almost straight line on the graph.
The line was supposed to be curved to show the cars
acceleration increasing as seconds went by.
4. Compare and contrast the lines seen on the distance vs.
time graph and the velocity vs. time graph. The difference
between the distance vs. time graph and the velocity vs.
time graph is that the velocity vs. time graph has a straight
line while the distance vs. time graph has a slightly curved
line. Also the distance vs time graph has a slope of 51.5 cm
while the velocity vs time graph has a slope of 19.28 cm.
5. Design another experiments that you will film and you will
use the Logger Pro software on. I would film my self
running back and forth in a 15 meter distance to capture
my acceleration and change velocity.