Overview of the project

The application of the principle of conservation of energy serves as a powerful tool for problem solving in the world. Usually, Newton's laws are used to solve many standard problems, however, there are other more straightforward methods which uses concepts regarding energy to solve such standard problems. An example would be this project in which students will make use of the concept of conservation of energy to perform a simple experiment involving the rolling of a metal ball bearing down an inclined plane and measuring the time it takes to travel the horizontal track.

Our Mission

The main objective that our group needs to accomplish at the end of the workshop is to be able to make use of more straightforward methods which uses energy instead of using Newton's law to solve standard problems. In this case, our group hopes to be able to make use of the concept of conservation of energy and equipment such as stopwatches and photogate sensors for data acquisition to determine the angle of inclination for which the time of travel across the horizontal track will be the least for this project.

Questions from project manual

1) What is the angle of inclination that gives the shortest travel time in Challenge 1 and 2?

2) What precautions have you taken in order to ensure consistency of your results?

Our Accomplishment

1) What is the end product/ findings?

2) A description/ explanation of your product/ findings

Our Gains

As a group,

1) Discuss how the project has helped to deepen your understanding/ broaden your awareness on selected subject discipline(s)

2) Describe how the new learning is/ can be connected to what you learnt/ are going to learn