DOES WEIGHT AFFECT DISTANCE?

Does the amount of weight affect how far a skateboard will go? That is what the

main focus of my experiment was to find out. I am really excited to do this project

because I love skateboards and it sounded really fun to do the project. My

hypothesis will be that the heavier the weights are, the farther the skateboard will go.

The reason why I think my hypothesis will be correct is that gravity affects objects

and pushes them closer to the ground; so weight will tend to go faster. Newton's

second law of motion states that the force of an object is equal to its mass multiplied

by its acceleration (F=ma).1 The Newton is a unit of force in the metric system. A

Newton is defined as the force needed to accelerate a 1-kg object 1 meter per second

per second. N = kg x m/s squared.2 Mass does not affect speed directly. It determines

how quickly an object can change speed (accelerate) under the action of a given force.

Lighter objects need less time to change speed by a given amount under a given

force.3 Imagine that you are attempting to shoot a basket and your friend is attempting

to block your shot. Let's further suppose that she had pushed off the floor with a force

exactly equal to the force you used to push off, but she has less mass (the amount of

"stuff" in an object) than you. The third law explains that the reaction force of the floor

would be equal to your friends action force. The reaction force however, would be acting

r mass; according to Newton's second law, your friend would have a greater

acceleration and go higher than you! According to Newton's third law your momentum is

equal to your mass multiplied by your velocity.4

Skateboards have been around since the 1940’s. They were first seen to be

made by wooden planks with wheels nailed to the bottom when California surfers

wanted to surf the streets; so they invented the skateboard. There are lots of different

types of skateboards. There are longboards, vert skateboards, cruisers, fishnet

skateboards, and trick boards.

Weights have also been around for quite a long time. They have been used for

several things like weighing objects to make the weight of another object the same. The

measuring unit “pound”, also known as ‘Libra pondo’ means “Libra of weight.”5

Recently, scientists have created a hover board, used as a skateboard. For some

people, skateboarding is just a hobby; for some it is a sport, and for others it is a

competition. The Extreme Games, also known as the XGames, were first started in

1995 and are held by ESPN. They have played a very big part in skateboarding history.

They were the games that started bringing skateboarding in as a professional sport.

Some famous skateboarders have been Tony Hawk, Stacy Peralta, Natas Kaupas, and

Mike Vallely.

Almost every teenager in the United States of America has ridden on a

skateboard at least once in their life time. Skateboarding has also brought in many tricks

that people have created like the hippie jump: a skateboarder rides along on a flat

horizontal surface at a certain velocity then jumps straight up without exerting any

horizontal force on the board.6 The Ollie: the skateboarder jumps up and off the board

pushing down quickly on the tail end of the board, causing it to rebound off the ground

and bounce back up.7

My procedure to do this experiment was to set up a table in my school’s gym,

mark it at a 2 foot incline with a piece of tape to show where I placed the skateboard

each time I rolled it off the table. I started by rolling my skateboard down without any

weights to get the base distance. After each test, I marked where it