Activity 6-Graphing Data
When shooting a bowling ball out of a canon, does increasing the weight of the ball also increase the distance it travels?
In order to perform this experiment, I used an online simulator located at http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/projectile-motion. I needed to isolate the weight variable, so when the simulation started, I noted all of the other variable information to ensure I kept them the same. The other variables were: angle, 45 degrees; initial speed, 18 meters per second; diameter, 0.25 meters; and no air resistance. I started out with the ball weighing 1 kilogram and increasing it by 1 kilogram every trial after until I reached 10 kilograms. After each attempt, I used the measuring tool provided in the simulation to measure the distance the ball traveled.
At each weight increment, the distance measured was always 33.6 meters. The weight of the ball had no effect on the distance it traveled. I used a bar graph to show the data using each weight as a separate data entry on the x-axis, and using the distance traveled along the y-axis. For clarity I decided to differentiate each weight by changing the color of it's bar and by labeling each data point's value.
Because the weight of the ball had no effect on the distance it traveled, it made me wonder which of the variables would affect the distance. The one I was most curious about was the air resistance. I think that a heavier object would experience more wind resistance than a lighter one, thus affecting the object's distance traveled. To test this theory, I would enable the air resistance and keep it constant for each weight ball and run the simulation again. I also know that if the angle of the canon was changed, but the weight of the ball stayed the same, the distance would also be affected. To test this theory, I would decide on one weight and keep it constant as I changed the canon's angle from 90 degrees to 0 degrees in 9 increment changes of 10 degrees each.