Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I need help finding information to use as research for this project. Not extremely internet search savvy. Please Help!!!!

Davelle,

Nice project! Some things you should look into before doing the project are conservation of angular momentum, moment of inertia, and angular velocity. If you're say rolling cars down an incline, these factors will affect the speed of the car.

Are you trying to measure the speed at which the tires are rolling or the speed of the car in general? Also, will you be increasing the mass of the tires when you make them bigger?

Here are some sites to help you get started:

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/e ... g99334.htm

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Over-Drive_20Tires

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mi.html

And of course, it never hurts to try. See what happens when you vary the tire size.

Hope this helps,

Manjinder

this project is intended to be extremely simple such that i plan on using two toy cars with different sized wheels, a set length of slightly elevated track, a stop watch and three trials.

in addition my intention is to gather data on which size tire will travel faster only.

Make sure that the tires are similar. An important consideration is the coefficient of friction between the ramp and the tires. If they differ, the results may be affected by this.

Also, are the masses similar enough? The force of friction = mu (coefficient of friction) x Normal Force (in the case of a ramp, mgcosx)

The larger mass will have a greater frictional force working against it.