Science Project question for Loring or anyone else.....

[gad5264]

Loring, you are always a wealth of information so I thought I would ask you. My oldest daughter has a project that she asked for my assistance on that needs to be completed by Tuesday. She has to construct a "Newton Car" for an experiment. Any advise or pointers you might like to share?

[crokett]

I was curious so did a search. Here's the best page out of a few I looked at. Pretty cool idea.

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/fune...ewton_car.html

[markmt]

Sir, look up newtons laws of motion. specifically the first, second and third law. F=ma.

Good luck
mark taylor

[LCHIEN]

the link Crockett gives looks good to me.
Make sure there is a slippery surface under the mass being ejected (a strip of UHMW or lacking that some wax paper or even a slip of thin plastic)
Keep the mass of the car platform as small as you can relative to the ejected mass (i.e. make the car lightweight). This will make the car move farther for a given mass ejection.

Good luck

[sacherjj]

As frictionless and lightest rolling car, with the heaviest weight you can get. What would be fun is if the car had multiple weights that were triggered after different length of polling. Then it just keeps accelerating.

[Alex Franke]

Have her try it with a very heavy weight, like sacherjj suggests, but then ask what would happen if the object weighed the same or less than the car. Try it out and measure how far both the car and the projectile travel from the starting point. You can also add some rubber bands to increase the accelleration. Maybe pose this question also: "What if the weight were attached so that it could not fly off? Would the car move? If so, how far, and in what direction(s)?"