Ziploc Zoomer and Graphs

 (Turns out major headings are not titles)


Ziplock Zoomer was the name of our investigation to find the relationship between mass and force. We started with deciding what was going to be our object to measure. Since we are all working from different places, we had to measure something we could all agree was constant through everything, and our quarters was the perfect item. We then came up with everything we needed to conduct a proper scientific investigation!

Our Dependent variable was Force in units of Newtons and our Independent was Mass in units of Quarters (since there was no way for us to accurately measure the weight of objects in our makeshift lab that is our desks, quarters was the best next thing since we could reasonably assume that each one weighted the same.)

To collect our data and measure the Force, we used our handy dandy IOlab brick. We all agreed to use our zipper bag and paper clip to hold our quarters and be able to measure them one quarter at a time. We started with zero quarters, and for each quarter added we took note of the force registered on the IOlab. We used 5 quarters in total. 

Collecting data with others in our groups was really helpful in making sure we were doing things right, because since we were all using the same exact items to perform our investigation, it would be reasonably assumed that our data should come out looking pretty similar.  We then plotted our data into graphs and compared our graphs. Interacting with the group help me realized and adjust the fact that the graph should not start at 0 mass and 0 force because the weight of the zipper bag and the paper clip already added some force when we had no quarters inside the bag.

We then had a long conversation about slopes and y-intercepts and adjusted graphs and in the end, our graphs ended up looking a little like this :



 According to my graphs, the slope is 0.055 newtons/quarters and the y-intercept is at 0.29 newtons. With this information I can now predict the force at any amount of quarters! So if I'm to predict how much force is in 8 quarters, I just plug in the numbers into the equation and it predicts that the force should be 0.73 newtons/quarters! Math is fun!


Comments

  1. Charles Lee-GeorgescuMarch 23, 2021 at 9:51 PM

    Hi Lenin!

    I think you did an excellent job describing the investigation, and you provided nice details. We agree on all the variable assignments, the meaning of the data, and the purposes of the fits. Our predictions are the same too–in your case it just looks like you added the weight of the bag (~0.29N), which would mean that your prediction for the weight of 8 quarters is nearly identical to mine (0.44N vs 0.45N).

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete

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