Car Racing
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Playing with the kids' toys on the weekend, I came across this car and became interested by the relationship between pulling it back and how far it would travel.
Was it a linear relationship or something else?
I set up an experiment. The results are in the video below:
Car Racing from Simon Job on Vimeo.
Also available on YouTube.
The video shows the results when the car is pulled back 5 cm, 15cm and 25 cm.
In Part Two of the video, the results are shown when the car is pulled back 10 cm, 20 cm and 30 cm.
My thought is that the teacher would show the first three results and make a table of the data. Then, make predictions for 10 cm, 20 cm and 30 cm.
A note on the way I set-up the experiment - the car does not start from zero. Rather, the car starts from 30 cm out and is then pulled back the required distance. This should make sense in the data table below.
Experiment Data
| Pull back | Starting Point | Finish Point | Distance Travelled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 250 | 820 | 570 |
| 100 | 200 | 1800 | 1600 |
| 150 | 150 | 2780 | 2630 |
| 200 | 100 | 3805 | 3705 |
| 250 | 50 | 4750 | 4700 |
| 300 | 0 | 5610 | 5610 |
(all measurements in millimetres)
Files
Enclosed in the file below: 1. Excel file with data, 3. GeoGebra file. (The video file can be downloaded from the Vimeo page).
This was a bit of good fun to make, there are certainly some things that could be done better.
Credits
Music: “Breakdown” by Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.
Download: Car Racing - Results Files (ZIP 36 KB)
Save link to Delicious · diigo · pinboard · twitter | Shorturl:
Comments
Nice work! One might wonder why it’s a linear relationship, and what’s with that little swerve it seems to do at the end?
What’s the hardware and software being making the video?
author
Stunt driving.
Just my Canon Ixus on a small tripod and iPhone camera for the measurement shots. Put together in iMovie.
This is awesome. I’m going to run this with my class when we do linear relationships. Now i need to see if the maths department are willing to buy the cars!
author
Well, my intention is that you could do it without the cars – just use the video.
Some toy cars need you to pull them back a couple of times (or a long way) as opposed to this particular car.
MacICT’s Pro-Bots Project have tried a similar idea with Y1/2 students using their Pro-Bot car robot. You might be interested to see them.
http://web2.macquarieict.schools.nsw.edu.au/09001/
Thanks Simon. Had fun with the cars activity with a stage 3 enrichment group from local primary schools. They compared flooring around the school and had to re-evaluate their hypotheses at the end.
Hey Simon,
This is an awesome idea! I got my students to bring in all of their pull-back cars and then plot the relationship between the pull-back distance and total distance travelled.
The lesson summary is on my blog – it promoted some great discussions.
http://pishop.tumblr.com
Thanks again,
Dan
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