Laboratory 4: Friction & Motion

Lab 4: Friction & Motion

Refer to the Beyond Labz application to find the lab bench and the Beyond Labz landing. Follow the instructions on the Beyond Labz worksheet specific to the lab title in order to complete this assignment.

Download the Beyond Labz worksheet for this lab here:

Friction & Motion.pdf Download Friction & Motion.pdf

(Note that in the worksheet a typo-graphical error occurs in that question #5 is labeled as question #6. There are only five questions in this lab worth 5 points each. For a total of 25 points for this lab.

Purpose

To discover how friction affects the motion of a sliding object.

Intuition
A car moves because of the friction between its tires and the ground. Walking is usually easy because
your feet slightly stick to the ground or floor. As you walk forward, your foot pushes backwards. Because of friction your feet don’t slide from under you unless you are on ice.

Definitions

Friction, Mass

Context & Theory
Friction is a force that acts in the opposite direction of motion. The amount of friction that an object
experiences depends on several variables that you will explore in this activity. One of those variables is what surfaces are touching: both the object and surface it is moving on. The surface interactions between different substances can lead to dramatically low friction or very high friction. In this activity you will discover the effects of different surfaces and materials on the time it takes for friction to stop a sliding sled.