In activity 54 students all had to create their own Intro into starting our experiment. The question we are asked to investigate is “how to find a way to drive a nail through a Styrofoam block”. Doing this experiment we have learned new vocabulary which will help better understand what we are doing. The vocabulary words are…
Potential energy- energy of position of stored energy
Gravitational potential energy- energy stored due to an object’s mass and height
Kinetic energy- energy of motion
So now that you have those definitions in mind, it’s time that you know the variables. The independent variable in this experiment is the different type of rods being contributed. The dependent is how far the nail will go in. the constants is the styro-block, nail, and the material of the tubes. Lastly, the control, which is just the rods. My hypothesis was “if I increase the weight of the rod, then it will go further through the styro-block”. So here are the materials we will be using.
Materials:
Styrofoam block
Large steel rod
Short steel rod
Nail
Long plastic tube
Short plastic tube
For this experiment there will be 2 trials trying to solve the energy that can drive this nail into this styro-block. Here is all the observations on all materials being used..

Long
Short
Length
10cm.
5cm.
Mass
98g.
48g.
Color
Rusty copper
Rusty copper
Steel rods

Plastic tubes

long short Length
18cm.
10cm. Mass

Color transparent transparent

Procedure:
1) Gather all materials
2) Place styro-block on flat surface
3) Place nail in block (just right amount to hold itself)
4) Hold tube around nail
5) Place large steel rod above tube and drop it above nail
6) Repeat drop a number of times until nail is fully in block
7) Record number of drops on data table
8) Repeat steps 2-7 for small steel rod
9) Analyze data
10) Record observations
11) Write analysis and conclusion
Data table: