In one of your experiments you will roll a marble down a ramp to provide an initial horizontal velocity.
Marble rolling down a ramp experiment.
It starts to roll faster and faster down the ramp right.
Using a water clock galileo measured the time it took for the ball to roll a known distance down the inclined plane.
It slows down as it goes up.
So that marble teetering at the top of the ramp has the potential energy of gravity which is the force that will pull it down the ramp.
Find more round objects spheres or cylinders that you can roll down the ramp.
But if you did this same experiment on a flat surface the marble would barely move right it is gravity that is pulling the ball down the ramp.
In this experiment you will roll a marble down a ramp to find out.
Now you give a gentle push to the marble going uphill on the second ramp.
See making measurements above.
Starting with the cylinder at rest use the stopwatch to measure the time to roll distance d 1 0 meter down the ramp.
Average calculated on rolls 2 3 and spare roll.
I predict that the steeper the ramp the faster the marble will travel.
Finally you push a marble on a ramp that represents the middle state between the first two in other words a ramp that is perfectly horizontal.
In this part the distance d down the ramp is the variable while the angle of slope is constant.
Set up the ramp with h 0 10 m above the table as shown in figure 1 2.
Use 1 d kinematics to predict the velocity of the ball xi at the bottom of the ramp.
It should be at least two and one.
Long cardboard tube such as an empty roll of wrapping paper to make your ramp.
Investigating the speed of a marble rolling down a variable ramp introduction in this experiment i am going to investigate the speed of a marble rolling down a variable ramp.
Taten williams luke kelly and jack ambrose.
The marble speeds up on its way down the ramp.
Suppose you start the marble at rest xe 0 m s and it travels a distance of d.
My two hypotheses suggested that the surface texture of an inclined ramp would affect the distance traveled by a marble rolled down it and that the less textured the ramp s surface was the farther the marble would roll.