The Path of the Marble Activity

Hello everyone, we've been doing a lot of labs lately (as you've probably seen from my blog posts) so Mrs.M decided to give us a little bit of a fun activity. This time we were blowing at different sized balls to see how far they would go! This is still kind of like a lab so there are still questions to answer...you'll understand everything once you see the lab below!

THE PATH OF THE MARBLE 

Guiding question: Does the mass of a marble affect how it moves? When given a force, what happens to its motion?

Hypothesis:My hypothesis is that the heavier the ball, the least distance it will move. If there is a lot of force on an object, then it moves further than if there's less or no force. The force affects the motion because if the object is light and there is a lot of force, then its motion will be affected by going further and faster.

GOLF BALL

SMALL MARBLE

BIG FOAM BALL

SMALL FOAM BALL

SMALL METAL BALL

TENNIS BALL

BIG MARBLE

PING PONG BALL

Data Analysis: As you can see from all my pictures, we tried all eight balls twice. If you look on the left side of each picture, you'll see that the force is coming from the same place, where as if you look on your right, you'll see how much force it took to move that particular ball. On the bottom of each square you'll see the distance the ball moved where as if you look at the two circles (one filled in one not) and the line in between, that shows in which direction the ball moved. If you see any bumps that looked like if the ball was jumping, it is just where we put the measuring tape, but you can see where the ball wanted to move. I can see from the pictures that each second test was different from the first, whether it was movement or distance. I can also see that three of the balls, the big marble, the golf ball and the tennis, took a much harder force or breath to move. By the way, we were blowing through straws and I was the only one blowing (for my group) so it is more accurate than if two people blew. From what I recall, the ping pong ball and the small foam ball were the easiest to move because they were so light and they barely needed a little air to move them. From what I saw, it looked like most of the balls were trying to fall off the table on the right side from where I was blowing!

Conclusion: My hypothesis for the first question was, "My hypothesis is that the heavier the ball, the least distance it will move." I think I was pretty correct except I left out one part, the fact that you need a harder force to even move heavier objects. If with a normal breath the ball doesn't even move, then the distance doesn't even matter anymore. I conclude (for this first part), "The heavier an object is, the more force it will take to move it and the less distance it will move." For the second part, my hypothesis was kind of divided in two, "If there is a lot of force on an object, then it moves further than if there's less or no force. The force affects the motion because if the object is light and there is a lot of force, then its motion will be affected by going further and faster." The first part is very true, if there is a lot of force on an object, it will move further than if there is little force on an object. The second part is also true, but I didn't explain what happens with a heavy ball. If the object is heavy, and there is a lot of ore, the object will make an attempt to move or move more than with little force because it needs stronger energy to have a motion. I conclude (for the second question), "If a lot of force is put on an object, it moves faster and longer than with less force. If the object is light and has a lot of force, it will move quickly and get further. If a lot of force is applied to an object which is heavy, then it will take an attempt to move although not moving as fast as a lighter object."

Further Inquiry: Maybe to improve my lab a little bit I would take of the measuring tape so the ball could move where it wants to go. Maybe I could also use a bigger surface like the floor in the hall way so it can go as far as it wants to.