Design and Conduct your own experiment with Projectiles

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Class Period.Projectile.Names ex: 3.Projectile.Justin T.Santa C
Learning Goals
Plan and design a scientific investigation that includes:
a. developing a testable question
b. stating a hypothesis (Ifthenbecause format)
c. identifying the independent(manipulated) and the
dependent (responding) variables
d. designing a written procedure for a controlled
experiment
e. construct a data table for data collection
f. graph data to demonstrate the relationships
g. keep all other conditions constant!
h. Write a concluding paragraph restating your question,
discuss your results in relation to your hypothesis, and mention any
difficulties/errors you made in your experiment.
Directions:
Log onto http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Projectile_Motion
Press the green RUN NOW button

What factors do you think effect projectile movement?

Initial velocity
Trajectory
Surface area perpendicular to direction of movement
The drag coefficient

With a partner, or by yourself, pick one of the above factors (other than
velocity) and propose a question.

Will increasing the drag coefficient change the distance an object travels?
Write your Hypothesis (Ifthenbecause)
If we increase the drag coefficient, the human will go a shorter distance because there is
the force air resistance resiting his path.

Explore the Projectile Simulation and determine how to test your question.
We will test our hypothesis by launching a human out of the cannon 10 times while each
time increasing the drag coefficient by 1.
Design a data table and collect data (think what is your independent variable,
what is you dependent variable)

Drag Coefficient

Distance in Meters
1

39.4

36.9

34.8

33.1

31.4

29.9

28.8

27.6

26.4

10

25.5

Show the relationship of your data in a graph made with a spreadsheet.

 Refer to learning goal h and write your conclusion

Using the data we collected, we have concluded that by changing the drag coefficient
, we can affect the distance an object travels by generating a force that acts against
the rate and the direction of movement. By increasing this force we can decrease the
distance an object travels.