Kinetic & Potential Energy Roller Coaster Lab Report
Madeline Ware p5 Nov. 20, 2013
Introduction:
Starting with this lab we constructed a ramp or a 'roller coaster' that would be able to let our marble go from the top of the table, down to the floor. The purpose of this study was to be able to find the kinetic and potential energy of a marble going through a twisted ramp through finding weight, height, time, and velocity. The original question was asking to find ot the kinetic and potential energy of the marble rolling down the 'roller coaster'. When I started this lab I already knew that the marble was going to have both kinetic and potential energy. I observed the structure of the ramp on how the marble would roll with ease.
Hypothesis:
If we construct different ramps, one being steaper than the other, then that marble will go faster because of the incline leading it down faster.
Materials:
styrofoam tube marble tape table chair pencil paper calculator triple beam balance stopwatch meter stick

Procedures: When starting this lab, we first started by weighing our marble so we could later figure out our velocity and potential and kinetic energy. Then we created the structure on which the marble would roll through. We measured the height of the ramp and marked the three spots where all of our velocities would be measured. For our first trial we released the marble at the top and immediately started the stopwatch to time the marble from start to finish. On the second trial, we released the marble at the top but did not start the timer til the marble rached the second piece of tape which marked for the second velocity. Finally, for the third trial, we did not start the stopwatch til the last piece of tape, so we could find our final time. Once we found all of the speeds, we were able to find the velocity for each trial. After we found the velocity, we could enter it into the equations so we could get the kinetic and potential energy. We then drew our picture of our structure. Lastly, we repeated all these steps with another structure that we created. We set up our control and experiment groups as the structure we developed, and all of its features such as the height, time, and velocity of the marble rolling through it. Some of the controls in the experiment could be the